


love to the point of invention

by agentpolastri



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: A lot of Existentialism, Android Villanelle, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Inventor Eve, Inventor/Android AU, Slow Burn, Villaneve, dark!eve, eve is extremely fucking smart, murder AND a kiss?, the gift keeps on giving!, villanelle is entirely too perceptive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentpolastri/pseuds/agentpolastri
Summary: “Your entire life has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge, Eve.Iam proof of that. So don’t you understand?"Eve is a harried prodigy and MIT graduate currently working for the top-notch M.V. technologies corporation. Villanelle is the entirely too perceptive android who is meant for far greater things than becoming interested in her creator.What happens when an android chooses her own purpose?
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 188
Kudos: 351





	1. does this unit have a soul?

Eve felt a nudge against her leg under the table. It was a finger, she knew that much, but she pointedly ignored it while Helene droned on at the head of the table with an equally-as-monotonous Powerpoint presentation. Her gaze flickered away to look at everyone else’s expression, just to see if they were as bored as she was—oh, no, she accidentally made eye contact long enough with Hugo for him to wink— _Bill_ simply raised an eyebrow and mimed dozing off.

 _She has the world at her fingertips and she still can’t fathom adding some color to her slideshow? Jesus Christ,_ Eve mouthed as she resisted the increasingly intense urge to roll her eyes. He grinned and shrugged complacently, which earned him a scandalized look from Eve. Keiko must have pulled a true miracle for him to _still_ be in good spirits at the end of the business day. 

“Bill, Eve, is there something you two would like to share?” 

Eve straightened up in her chair immediately looking like a deer in the headlights in response to Helene’s irritation, but Bill simply spread his hands in admission. Helene stood in front of the slideshow with her arms crossed with the barest shadow of impatience.

Ah, that’s where Bill’s pissiness went. 

“Uh—no, sorry,” Eve muttered. She wanted to sink down through the chair and creep out of the highrise building. Embarrassment prickled at the back of her neck.

“Actually, if we’re allowed to talk now—Eve, will you _please_ take this fucking croissant? I’ve been trying to give it to you under the table for the past ten minutes,” Elena interjected with a pointed slam of the brown paper bag on the glass table. 

Helene stood at the end of the room, now looking somewhere between angry and completely defeated. Eve’s hand slowly crept towards the bag. The crinkle was _painfully_ loud as she clutched it to her chest in silence. Hugo paused the inspection of his fingernails to snicker. 

“Can you shut up?” Helene snapped. 

Eve smugly smiled at him as a deep pink dusted his otherwise immaculate skin. He didn’t respond, probably too busy thinking of ways he could please the woman he had designated just yesterday as the _peak French MILF._ His words, not Eve’s. Not like she could really disagree, but she had the decency to keep it to herself. 

“Since you all seem to be absolutely incapable of paying attention today, this meeting is dismissed,” Helene finally continued, venom dripping from her accented voice to punctuate her displeasure. Several voices chimed in displeasure, but Helene had clearly made her final decision, and soon, most of the meeting attendees began to slink away. Eve began to gather her things like the rest of the board room, already thinking of stuffing the croissant in her mouth, but was brought to a stand still by Helene’s next words.

“Eve, I want an update on Project V by the end of the week. None of that glitch nonsense.” 

Suddenly, the zipper of her jacket seemed very interesting.

“Sure,” she replied. The word felt like it cracked in half on her tongue and dissolved into a bitter taste. Her throat was drier than the Sahara desert as her mind raced with several thoughts, most of which were ways to con Helene into giving her more time. Another error? An unexpected shutdown? Rogue coding?

“You’re very intelligent, Eve,” Helene said as she came closer. She rounded the table until she was directly in Eve’s space, breathing the same air as her, but still somehow so untouchable in her wrinkleless suit. “But did you really think I didn’t know you were lying?” 

Eve dragged her gaze from the ground to look her in the eye. 

“No,” she said. Helene’s gaze twinkled with mirth.

“Interesting.” She spun away before Eve could say anything else and breezed by as if nothing had ever happened.

“I want the report by 9,” she called and closed the double doors behind her. 

—

Eve came back to her apartment to eerie silence and utter darkness. She flicked on the lights as she kicked off her shoes and dropped her bag in the entrance. There wasn’t a single sign of life in the entire space. 

Something poked at her foot.

“There you are,” she cooed at the platinum ladybug-shaped machine. A smile flashed onto the dark interface followed by a happy high-pitched whistle. Eve reached down and brushed a wayward piece of dust away from its back where a small engraving of GABRIEL flashed in the light. 

“Where is she, then?” Eve questioned. GABRIEL jolted on the floor near her foot and began skittering away on the floor towards the living room, a very luminescent frowning face scrolling across the black interface lighting the way like a beacon in the fog. She followed slowly, meandering along to pick up stray books, discs, and wine glasses. Red stained the white countertop. She cursed under her breath.

GABRIEL whistled in finality. It spun around in circles dramatically, just about as panicked as a machine could get, probably because there was a corpse slouched on her couch. Eve stilled in the doorway with her armful of books and a wine glass in her hand. An orange light blinked in the darkness of the room—an LED power bulb. 

She was fine. 

“Oh, my greatest creation, burnt out like a candle in the wind,” Eve began moaning dramatically. She dropped the books on the table with a thud and pretended she didn’t see the corpse’s foot twitch erratically. Her hand ghosted the synthetic blonde hair framing the android’s face, sweeping it away and pressing her fingers to the bottom of her chin. The skin was warm, bright, and soft. It could have fooled anyone—but it would never fool Eve. 

“ _Aaaaaaaaahhhh!_ ” The android suddenly rocketed upwards from where she had been slouched. Her eyes were comically wide as she screamed in Eve’s face, causing her to jump back. The scream dissolved into maniacal laughter. The blonde clutched at her stomach and rolled over with a shit-eating grin. 

“I got you, didn’t I, Eve?” She exclaimed. Her finger jabbed at the older woman in accusation. 

Eve picked up the wine glass she had set down and downed the rest of it. She grimaced. That one had probably been there for a few days, now. 

“No, Villanelle,” she replied flatly. Villanelle eyed her for a moment, then shook her head. 

“I know I did, even if you will not say it,” she insisted. “Did you bring back the Hagelslag I asked for?” 

Eve pursed her lips.

“ _Eve,_ ” Villanelle whined, much more affected by this than her apparent failure to scare the living daylights out of her. She dragged out the first _e_ syllable to the point of a minor glitch in her voice that made it cut off weirdly, sounding something like what you would hear in _Wall-E._ Eve made a mental note to investigate the cause of the minor, but illusion-shattering, blunder. 

She threw her hands up.

“What even _is_ Hagelslag? Where did you _find_ that?” Eve asked. She turned and picked up the books Villanelle had scattered throughout the apartment to place them back in the large shelf that took up one complete wall of the room. Several frames hung on the other ones, all of them numerous degrees she had obtained and absolutely none of the actual people and the relationships that came with them. Engineering, computer sciences, neuroscience, mathematics… the list went on. 

She wasn’t under the impression that it wasn’t at least a _little_ sad. Very impressive, but also very, very depressing. She did graduate from MIT multiple times, though, so really, everyone who had something to say about it could suck her ass. 

“It’s Dutch, and I think you forgot that you literally implemented a search browser in the last update that we added,” Villanelle replied matter-of-factly. Eve chose not to comment on the use of _we,_ and instead snorted to herself. 

“The things that you say sometimes make me question if it actually worked.” She walked back to the white-dominated kitchen and began brewing a cup of coffee. Villanelle stomped after her, absolutely affronted. 

“Of course it works! It’s just _boring_ when you _know_ everything already. You know what I mean, right? Because Google says that you have five degrees and two d—” 

“Yes, Villanelle, I know, it’s j—”

“— _your entire life has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge,_ Eve. _I_ am proof of that. So don’t you understand? Don’t you know why I would rather ask questions and touch and think and _perceive?_ ” Villanelle’s eyes searched Eve’s for something, _anything_ to grasp that they were on the same page. That she was not alone, for all intents and purposes. Eve’s hand felt warm from when she had reached out during her outburst. At this moment, she used it to ground herself among all the information filtering in from her brief search into Eve’s past and the bodily cues she kept picking up on from the inventor. They flashed red.

Uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Eve relented softly. Her fingers flexed underneath Villanelle’s touch, causing the android to pull away quickly with an apologetic glance. She instead chose to cross her arms in front of the puffy pink dress she had insisted that Eve buy her when they had traveled to New York for an Expo. 

“Then what do you mean?” Villanelle demanded. 

“I just want you to use all of the tools at your disposal,” Eve answered automatically. She added cream and sugar to the steaming mug on the counter, then turned around to face the other woman. “Directive.”

Villanelle stiffened, pupils evaporating into a blank nothingness. “Specified target elimination through highly skilled and discreet maneuvers. Information recruitment and relay to keyholders of the M.V. corporation. Protection and defense in regards to individual Eve Park.”

She blinked rapidly and scowled. “I hate it when you do that, Eve.” 

The other woman wasn’t listening, was only staring at the android in scrutiny. The fact of the matter was that she didn’t insert herself into the directive. The rest of it was exactly how she had typed it into her coding before daring to switch her on for the first time—but this was a new development. A _very_ new development. 

“Did you overwrite your directive?” Eve asked slowly, testing the words on her tongue, weighing them between the two of them. The blonde blinked.

“No. Why? Did I say something different?”

Eve shook her head. “No, it just glitched for a minute, so I didn’t know if you had tried anything new without my consent.” Or if anyone else had tried to write anything new. She could think of a few names that were capable, but none that had any _reason_ to write _that._ It would have been much smarter to insert themselves. The android was nigh unstoppable, save for a few little things that certainly needed to be tweaked. This would probably have to be one of them. 

What did it hurt if she _left_ it, though?

Villanelle looked puzzled. “You know I do not have the capabilities to self-rewrite.” 

No, she wouldn’t. Helene would pick up on it the minute she asked for the directive herself. Then it would be a whole new ballpark. 

Maybe she would find a way to hide it. Helene was already hell-bent enough on Eve’s current assignment to… alter Villanelle. _Adjust,_ she had corrected, but Eve knew exactly what she wanted. Not even enough of a thought process to be considered an android, just another titanium-framed body capable of following instructions. A _shell._

And right now, Villanelle was not a shell. 

“I guess,” she admitted. Eve picked up the coffee mug from the counter. “Want to watch a movie?” 

Villanelle grinned at her, already leaps and bounds ahead. “You know me _too_ well, Dr. Dr. Professor Eve Park.” 

“Don’t call me that.”  
—

Greetings,

I have an urgent coding issue with Project V that may need some revision at best and a second opinion at worst. I sincerely hope that you will be able to meet me at 9 am tomorrow morning in my lab, though I do apologize for the short notice. Again, I cannot stress how urgent this is.

Regards, 

E.P.

—

Hello,

This is to confirm that I will be attending the 9 am meeting.

Regards,

K.S.


	2. anomaly

They say that invention is a woman’s love letter to the world. Eve could attest to that as she laid in bed surrounded by the darkness of her bedroom-turned-office-turned-makeshift-lab. Papers scattered nearly every surface of every piece of furniture—it was funny, for someone so involved in technology, she really liked to use the old fashioned way of designing things. It was easier to get rid of it, that way. Burn the paper. You couldn’t really burn a file. Once it was out there, it was there to stay. She didn’t trust her work with anyone but herself, and maybe Bill.

Call it paranoia, if you will.

Only she knew that her initials were carved onto the titanium frame of Villanelle’s body. It was the very thing holding her up, the thing that enabled her to move so swiftly, or to cup something gently, or even just to pull a face at something she had said. It had been a veritable pain in the ass to get it there in the first place. It’s not exactly easy to etch lettering into titanium metal, so she had stolen a laser pen from an M.V. corporation lab and had gone hog wild once she had arrived home. 

In a way, it was her little secret. A single mark on something physical that wasn’t a piece of paper that verified her contribution to humanity’s steady ascent into technological prowess. She wanted to ensure that long after she was gone, there was going to be a piece of her somewhere that existed far beyond symbolic degrees and titles that nearly amounted to nothing. 

They were all buried in the same ground, after all. 

She couldn’t stop thinking about what Villanelle had mentioned earlier. The fire in her synthetic eyes had made her nervous, had triggered something deep and primal so strongly that Eve had bordered on uncomfortable. Luckily for her, the android had picked up on it relatively quickly and had even backed off. It was frightening how Villanelle could incite such human reactions without even pausing. 

Where did Eve draw the line between human and android? Was the essence of being human boiled down to merely being composed of skin and blood and bones, or was it a perspective? A way of expression? A bundle of visceral emotions and reactions that couldn’t be emulated elsewhere? What was to say that Villanelle wasn’t more human than Eve?

Conversations like the one in the kitchen made her question these things. It made her think about how far she had taken Villanelle’s development, far beyond the normal boundaries of robotics and veering into something more _dangerous._ It wasn’t the weapons component—it was self-actualization. Villanelle was fully aware and fully sentient. Eve had plainly ignored the possibility that she could self-govern, but her evolving directive was the biggest, fattest red flag she could possibly lay eyes on if there ever was one. 

Eve was playing God. Could she _stop?_

Villanelle had been right, at the core of it all. The pursuit of knowledge was her borderline _obsession._ She had devoted so much of her life to unearthing the _why_ and _how_ of things—the mechanics and inner workings, why they made sense, _how_ they did it. It was one thing to discover information and the elements that had already existed in this world, but it was something else completely to _create_ a _living being._ To birth something completely new—not of flesh, bone, and blood, but of metal, latex, and wires that tangled together so thoroughly you could mistake them for a network of nerves. It was raw, untouched, yet totally refined. 

That was what Eve had been striving for when M.V. corporations came knocking on her door. They had nearly pulled her out of graduate school—the corporation gave her all of the resources that she could have possibly needed for her noble endeavor in the name of intelligence and a healthy dose of _why the fuck not?_

There was just one catch: they wanted her to build a weapon. 

_Everything comes at a price,_ she had reminded herself. It would have been too good to be true to completely be given the reins like that without a single limitation or demand. So here she was: simultaneously building the project of her dreams (and nightmares, so it seemed), but also loathing the inevitability of giving her— _it—_ away. Most likely to be torn apart by the violence of the world. A sniper, maybe, or a very well-placed blade…

Villanelle would change everything. It was a heavy weight to bear on someone’s shoulders, even if they were made out of titanium. Or, in Eve’s case, some reinforced bone matrix and a couple of screws leftover from an unfortunate accident. Eve was certain that Villanelle knew that she was _exceptional._ She boasted it, constantly, but not in the full weight of what it meant, purely as a petty way to win an argument over what clothes to buy or what food to cook. Villanelle liked to hide behind menial _human_ things, liked to indulge in her own _interests—_ another thing she had evolved herself—like _fashion_ and _hagelslag._ There were times when Eve would be poring over blueprints and emails and she would watch Villanelle stand in the doorway stock still, simply observing her over the whirring of her vents. 

It was that same mechanical breath of fresh air that would remind her as to who Villanelle really was at her core: an android. As much as she pretended not to be, she _was,_ and always would be. 

It also reminded her as to why she continued to do any of this in the first place. Because, for better or for worse, they were in this together, now. Eve had already sacrificed too much in her life for a sentient jumble of wires. Why let it go to waste? 

Eve knew that there was no one like Villanelle with as much certainty as the countless equations and laws she had learned during all of those years of school. 

Eve now felt guilty for not getting the hagelslag. They were really just sprinkles, right? Eve could find sprinkles. 

She drifted off to wayward thoughts about why the fuck anyone came up with putting sprinkles on buttered bread, and why _her_ android was so obsessed with the idea. In the dead of night, she often forgot that Villanelle didn’t bleed the same blood as her. 

—

 _Buzz. Buzz. Buzz._

Eve rapped her nails rhythmically against the countertop of her desk. Her gaze was far away, her mind too busy with jumping over lines of code and dredging up every single molecule of knowledge she had about computers to figure this thing out. Villanelle sat in the corner with her boots propped up on the armrest of her chair, though she hadn’t moved in quite some time. Perhaps selfishly, perhaps as an extra safety precaution, Eve had discreetly let her power supply run low in case Helene decided to get any funny ideas while Villanelle was within her grasp. The LED light on her ankle had slowly dimmed from a smothering orange to a fiery red. 

In other words, Villanelle was tired. By extension, she was irritable. Again, another issue Eve hadn’t managed to pan out quite yet.

“Are you going to answer that?” The android question warily. Her head lolled around on her shoulders lazily from where she had been resting it against the wall just a few moments prior. Eve could see the way her pupils dilated and refocused on the phone on the desk. She could only guess if Villanelle was calculating the frequency of the tinny vibration the device produced while it rattled against the glass surface of the desk. It was just on the other side of being annoying. 

“No,” Eve flatly replied. Knowing the contents of her phone and the company she kept, it was Elena going bonkers over the latest episode of _The Bachelor_ or Hugo asking if he could bum a cigarette off of her for the third time that week.

Villanelle rolled her eyes and went back to sulking in her designated corner of the office. She had already broken Eve’s stapler. She wasn’t chancing anything else accidentally being destroyed. 

The door suddenly busted open to reveal a very pressed Carolyn Martens followed by a much more sheepish Kenny closely standing behind her. He waved awkwardly, the phone still clutched in his hand with Eve’s contact profile displayed clearly on the screen.

“Sorry about the door. I did try to warn you,” he supplied as a way of greeting her. Eve had stilled into a statued version of herself. _Why the fuck was one of two chairpeople of the company standing in her office? And why hadn’t she ironed her shirt this morning?_

Villanelle snickered to herself. “See? You should have listened to me.”

“You know damn well that you could have given me warning as to who was coming,” Eve retorted immediately. If this were back in her apartment, or even only in their company and no one else’s, she would have used Villanelle’s new _protect and defend_ directive as leverage in the argument. As it were, she was unfortunate enough to have to suffer through Carolyn Martens’ unwavering stare. 

She leveled a calm gaze at the other woman. Well, the calmest she could manage, given the circumstances. 

“Can I help you?” Eve asked. Oh, fuck, did that sound disrespectful? Did she sound mean? Would Carolyn even _pick up on it?_

“I don’t know, can you?” Carolyn responded. She raised her eyebrows pointedly, then turned her attention to Villanelle, who had busied herself with slowly picking the leaves off of the only plant in the entire space. She stopped with several brown, crumpled bits clutched in her hands, and slowly looked up to find everyone staring at her. 

“It’s dead anyway,” she provided as what she deemed a suitable explanation, even shrugging, before returning to her previous actions. 

“That’s the robot, is it? Charming,” Carolyn murmured. She waltzed across the small space of the office and did a small semi-circle around Villanelle. Kenny looked between her and Eve while chewing on the bottom of his lip. He had his laptop bag with him strapped onto his back, so maybe all was not lost as she had originally assumed. 

“Villanelle,” Eve replied, “but yes.”

Carolyn paused. 

“What?” She asked. Eve shifted uncomfortably in her seat and drummed nervously against the desk again. Oh, shit. Did she fuck up? 

“It’s her name,” she explained, feeling rather stupid now that the other woman was scrutinizing her work. Carolyn didn’t respond, only let out a light hum.

“It’s very…” Carolyn paused. “British.” 

“Isn’t that a type of poem?” Kenny chimed in quizzically. 

Eve could not believe her ears. Was that an insult, or a compliment?

“It’s actually Italian in origin,” Villanelle piped up. Her eyes were flickering bizarrely—undoubtedly reading a text no one else could see except for the android. “Eve, she doesn't care about my name. She is just here to see the shiny new toy.” With that, she batted her eyelashes and posed like a model on the cover of _Vanity Fair._

Villanelle’s gaze flickered down the angular form of Carolyn with mild interest. “If you do not intervene, you will soon need a hip replacement. Naughty, naughty, Carolyn Martens—or should I call you _boss?_ ”

“That’s one way to put it, I suppose,” Carolyn stated. She turned to Eve. “You are to report directly to me. Do you understand?” 

Eve made a face and completely disregarded any previous intimidation she felt in the presence of the other woman. “What about Helene?”

“Clearly, this is much more advanced than I thought it was,” Carolyn replied with another side glance towards Villanelle. “I’d rather not risk any information getting leaked to some… unsavory places. Would you?” 

Villanelle muttered something about Carolyn’s future hip replacement getting out to the press. Kenny smiled to himself. 

Eve mulled it over. “No,” she admitted, “of course not. Will this change anything?” 

“Don’t be silly. However, do provide me with weekly updates, as per usual,” Carolyn said, then gestured between Kenny and Eve. “Now, you two have your little meeting. Kenneth, I will be purchasing crepes at the market if you need me.” With that, she turned and left without a single glance back. 

—

Villanelle coughed. Which, by the way, was ridiculous, because there was not a single physiological reason for her to do so except to break the awkward silence that followed Carolyn’s departure. Somehow, it made it even worse. 

—

“What the fuck just happened?” Eve whispered to herself. Kenny took this temporary existential crisis as an invitation to set up his laptop and plug it into Villanelle’s wrist panel. The android whistled a tune and swung her legs mindlessly, even as it was interrupted in the middle by the chime notifying her that she was currently plugged into another device.

It really was the little things that separated her from Eve and Kenny. Besides the gaping metal panel in her arm, of course. 

“You should have given me the cool light-up spinal implants,” Villanelle said once Eve and Kenny were crowded around her as well as his laptop screen. Rows and rows of code lit up her office. The expected was certainly present: files upon files, dialogue generation, physical movement—

And then there was the unexpected. 

“Blimey,” Kenny whispered. Eve didn’t say anything, only scooted forwards in her chair and adjusted her glasses accordingly. The coloring was the same, but upon further inspection of the dates of entry, they kept _changing._ Minutely. Updating in real-time, without any of her own intervention or thought. 

“It’s living code,” Eve realized. Villanelle, in one way or another, was _alive._ Well and _truly_ alive. “What’s the origin?” She asked curiously. 

Kenny scrolled down, clicked a few keys, and opened a new window. “Says it’s—er—from the insula,” he answered. Slowly, he brought his gaze to Eve, who suddenly looked guilty. “Know anything about that, Eve?”

She bit her lip. “Of course not,” she muttered. 

Of course she fucking did. 

“The insular cortex is believed to house the capabilities for compassion, empathy, self-awareness, cognitive functioning and social emotions,” Villanelle stated automatically. When Eve shot her a glare that could have killed someone, she shrugged innocently. “I should use _all_ the tools at my disposal,” the android mocked in the face of her fury. 

“Alright, so maybe I had a little side project—” Eve began. Kenny immediately cut her off with a long groan. “But it didn’t work! Or at least I _thought_ it didn’t work. I removed the insula _ages_ ago,” she defended. “This has to be self-developed.”

“Or maybe the insula triggered something,” Kenny suggested. 

“Hey, Siri,” Eve called. “What do you do when your prototype killing machine starts developing feelings?” 

“I’m sorry, no results came up for ‘what do you do when your prototype killing machine st—’”

“I figured.” 

—

The drive back to Eve’s apartment was silent. It was weird because of two things: normally, Villanelle would be blaring the music as loud as Eve would let her, even if she complained about going deaf early because of her ‘fragile human ears’. Second of all: clearly, both of them wanted to speak, but couldn’t figure out how to start. Eve kept chewing on the inside of her lip. Villanelle’s foot wouldn’t stop tapping. 

_Nervousness,_ Eve’s mind immediately categorized. Since the discovery she had made with Kenny, it was easier to identify things more as a side effect of an _emotion_ than simply viewing it as a frustrating glitch. Now the problem was whether or not she considered _having_ emotions a glitch in itself. Was it an issue? _Would_ it be an issue? This wasn’t what Carolyn or Helene had signed up for, but Carolyn had seemed intrigued in comparison to Helene’s insistence of having a straight-and-narrow murder-droid of some sort. Maybe Villanelle still had a chance. 

The android picked at the edge of her jacket. 

“The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think,” Villanelle finally said in the tight space of the vehicle. Eve spared a glance to the blonde—she was staring out of the window, fiddling with her clothes, and strangely somber. Looking back at the road, the older woman sighed. She recognized the quote.

“Guess we’d make a great tragi-comedy, then,” she replied. 

“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them,” Villanelle went on. 

Eve quirked an eyebrow. “Now I’m convinced that you’re just scanning through Goodreads.” 

“And what if I am?” The android shot back immediately. She paused, then visibly relaxed after noticing that she had gotten strangely tense in the moment. “I could not find the words to describe how I am—I’m—” Villanelle faltered. “How I am feeling, to put it simply … even if you do not like it.”

_Wait, what?_

“What makes you think that?” Eve challenged. She took a sharp turn and felt a cool elbow brush against hers in the motion. 

“You did not seem pleased, back at the office,” Villanelle said. “But I could not get a very good read on you. You are the hardest person I have ever had to analyze, Eve. Everyone else is as plain as day—but _you?_ Nothing.” 

For a moment, Eve remained silent, but she pursed her lips in thought. “I was worried,” she confessed. “About you, for you, for the future. I was thinking about the… consequences,” she muttered. Silence enveloped them once more save for the low rumble of car tires against hot pavement. 

“You know you’re important to me,” Eve continued. It wasn’t a question. She felt fingertips graze against her skin like a trail of fire until a full, sturdy palm rested on her thigh and squeezed comfortingly. 

“You tell me every day. In your own way. Sometimes that includes yelling.” 

Eve caught Villanelle’s gaze in the reflection of the window and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think yall!!! i couldn't resist updating it  
> im @topeve on tumblr :^)


	3. browsing history

The week dragged itself by sluggishly. Villanelle had no issues aside from the giant mass of inextricable code tangled in her synthetic brain, which Eve considered a point on her part. She should’ve—it _was_ her work. Her mess to make, her mess to clean up. Not right now, mind you, there were more important things to worry about. If the code wasn’t hurting or causing any delay in Villanelle’s progress, there was little need to disturb it, lest she cause the next critical error. 

… For now, at least. Eve was bound to tinker. It was inevitable until she felt that familiar itch possessing her mind. It was akin to the first spark that had pushed her to create the android’s entire concept. 

_Surrounded by darkness except for the dim light of her laptop monitor, Eve scratched away at a piece of scrap paper she had fished from the floor underneath her desk. On one side of the jagged square: a list of ingredients—_ materials _—on the other, a tiny sketch of what appeared to be a frame with several focal points._

_A beam of light suddenly broke the tunnel of focus she had crafted within a few minutes. Or was it hours? Niko’s boxy shadow loomed over her shoulder before he placed a steaming mug of tea just to her left._

_“How are you feeling?” He murmured into her ear. Gently, he pressed a scruffy kiss to her cheek—undoubtedly a greasy, uncared for, dirty patch of skin considering how long it has been since she had surfaced from her little nook of an office—but a kiss all the same._

_For the first time in a long time, Eve felt…_

_“Okay,” she whispered, the barest twitch of a smile invading her lips. Now that her attention had been diverted to something else, the pencil felt foreign in her hand. She would pick it up later when Niko had returned to work or gave her some more space. Whatever came first. The burning fire of inspiration hadn’t vacated her body just yet. She had the strangest feeling that it wouldn’t leave for a long, long time._

_The thought of it made her excited. Made her want to_ do _things. Maybe things like..._

_Eve swiveled in her chair to face her husband and regarded his silhouette in the doorway._

_“How about I go take a shower,” she began, “and meet you in the bedroom?” From where she sat, Eve could see the distinct raise of his eyebrows. He hadn’t been expecting that. Neither was she if it was any consolation._

_“Sounds fine to me,” Niko laughed._

—

“Eve, Eve, Eve,” Villanelle sang loudly. She swung her body around the pole with her arms for what must have been the sixth or seventh time since they had arrived at the training facility. The older woman tied her hair up in a ponytail and threw her bag to the side, ready for an exciting afternoon of… pushing buttons. 

Yeah, yeah, Villanelle got to have all the fun. As long as she didn’t end up losing a limb again. She hadn’t made the same mistake twice, so the android had that much going for her—but it was Eve, a _human,_ who manned the controls. If Villanelle had been honest the other day, then she couldn’t predict what Eve was planning to do next. Mostly. It would explain why she got knocked flat on her ass so often during the beginning of her training.

“Alright, you know the drill,” Eve called out once she had taken a seat at the desk. There were no monitors here, only several surfaces absolutely full of buttons, dials, and levers, all designated to control a different kind of enemy or adversary. Eve watched from behind a thick wall of plexiglass as Villanelle wandered out onto the training platform with no regard towards the bright yellow _danger_ letterings that plagued the borders. 

“Wait—” Villanelle started, but immediately rolled out of the way of a stray flying projectile. She shot Eve a dirty look, who only shrugged innocently despite clearly having her finger on the button. 

“Which one are we doing today?” The android yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. Eve shook her head.

“I’m not telling you. You’re going to have to roll with the punches,” she replied over the intercom. The blonde visibly pouted but began walking backward nonetheless, eyes already peeled for whatever Eve could throw at her. Literally _or_ figuratively. 

—

_”We want someone adept. Lean, but strong. Like an animal. Primal and vicious, yes?” Helene said. She opened a folder on the table and slid a single sheet of paper across the table to Eve. Her dark eyes scanned and perused the document liberally. Behind those dark pupils, the gears were turning in her brain so loudly you could almost hear the clink._

_Eve hummed in interest. “The frame and outer appearance have already been finalized, but I think that you and…” She looked up at the other figure sitting at the table pointedly._

_“Konstantin,” the man supplied, not tearing his eyes from the monitor of his phone. She was almost certain he was watching a hockey game but chose not to comment regardless._

_“..._ Konstantin, _will be happy with the results. Here are the previews. We simulated what the final product will be when we finally get the skin samples back.” Eve slid out a couple of photos and laid them out for the two of them to see. Blonde hair, full lips, and glittering eyes stared back at them neutrally. The body the head sat on was slim but capable. Stable. Agile._ Dangerous.

_“Interesting choice,” Helene commented. Konstantin grunted in agreement._

_“People tend to underestimate women.” There was a moment where Eve and Helene both nearly rolled their eyes, but the former continued regardless, collecting the photos and placing them back in their folders. “She will be an excellent chameleon, I assure you.”_

_“Your employment relies on it,” Konstantin said._

—

Eve felt a little guilty when she saw the brief panic on Villanelle’s face at the sound of the grinding metal chains near the ceiling, but she was fully confident that her android could cope with whatever she threw at her. Large, arm-like projectiles swung in violently from every side, spinning wildly and threateningly while jerking in odd angles and patterns. Eve watched and could pinpoint the moment where Villanelle kicked into overdrive and began tracking every movement in her vicinity.

The way she dodged was unnatural but effective. Each pace and leap that her legs took was measured and strong, but quick enough to be missed in the blink of an eye. Eve observed the way that Villanelle’s frame and synthetic muscle moved underneath the skin. She could almost feel the hydraulic pressure under her fingertips despite being so far away. Perhaps she’d pause the session just to see what was going on there...

Someone cleared their throat behind her. Eve jerked in her chair and spun around.

“Good morning, Eve,” Carolyn greeted her cordially. All sharp angles draped in an expensive-looking peacoat, the woman stuck out like a sore thumb among all of the grease and machinery in the training facility. Next to Eve of all people especially, what with her hastily thrown on cardigan and loose ponytail. 

“I thought it was the afternoon?” Eve questioned with a smile. She discreetly tried to sit up in her chair, but only caused an obnoxious amount of squeaking in the process. 

Carolyn looked at her. She stopped. 

“No one says good afternoon when they take themselves seriously,” Carolyn replied. Before Eve could get the chance to respond or even _think_ about it, she continued, “Things seem to be going well with Villanelle.” Her gaze flickered past Eve and to the scene transpiring before them.

“Oh!” Eve whipped back around and went to slam the ‘STOP’ button, only to see that Villanelle was standing alone among what appeared to be the remains of her adversaries. Twisted pieces of metal were strewn everywhere along with pepperings of nuts and bolts. The android’s tank top had a small tear on it across the breast, but everything else looked fairly intact. 

“Yes, things are going wonderfully,” Eve breathed. She turned on the intercom. “Good job, Villanelle. Wait right there.” 

Villanelle responded with an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up. 

“Well, if I’m not mistaken, I think that she is more than ready for her first official assignment.” Carolyn tore her gaze away from the rubble on the training platform to look at Eve. “What do you say, Eve?”

Eve’s brain stopped and stuttered, struggling to keep up with the conversation. “Well, I don’t know, I think I’d—”

“Right, then,” Carolyn cut her off, apparently having heard enough of her doubts. “I will forward the details to you tonight. Please ensure she is properly equipped and up-to-date. We would hate to have any accidents, especially with someone like her.” She picked up her bag that she had hung off of the doorknob, preparing to leave.

“Can I—can I come with her?” Eve blurted. Her head was reeling, still trying to absorb the fact that Villanelle would be sent in the field so soon. She trusted her to function like she was supposed to, but something in the back of her mind made her do a double-take. The other woman noticeably paused. 

“I suppose if you would like to observe.” Burning silence. “Actually, you will accompany her. Consider this a trial run of your work. Take notes.” Carolyn glanced back at Eve one last time, nodded, then left the facility. 

Eve collapsed in her chair with a groan. 

—

“Eve? I came in because it was getting very quiet, and I saw Carolyn leave.” Villanelle’s voice floated in from near the doorway of the little operator’s alcove. It got progressively closer along with the accompanying footsteps. She felt a light touch on her arm. 

The older woman opened her eyes to find brilliant blue irises flecked with gold staring into hers.

“ _Jesus,_ ” Eve yelped. She shoved herself back into the chair and rolled halfway across the space. “You can’t do that!”

Villanelle smirked and canted her head to the side. “Are you and Carolyn having a secret affair I don’t know about? It is rude to cheat on your partner, Eve,” she teased. 

“You’re not my partner,” Eve grumbled. She sunk further into herself, wishing her cardigan would swallow her whole in this stupid plastic rolling chair. 

“From what Carolyn was saying, it sounds like we are, _partner,_ ” Villanelle drawled and took a few steps closer. “I think we should celebrate tonight with champagne instead of that disgusting red wine you drink.” 

The older woman remained silent, attempting to hold her tongue and not snap at the android. Finally, she muttered, “You just have no taste.”

Villanelle’s subsequent high-pitched laugh echoed throughout the entire building. 

“ _I_ have no taste? Look at what you’re wearing!”

How did Eve somehow make the woman of her nightmares? It must have been payback for a past life. Kicking puppies, maybe, or for drinking milk as a beverage. _This_ was who she had to prepare for a _literal assassination._

She was going to get the champagne, but not because Villanelle had said so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first kill assignment next chapter...... spooky!!!  
> I'm @topeve on Tumblr :^) come say hi!


	4. gateway exception

“This is not what I had in mind when you said that we were watching a movie,” Villanelle complained when the ending credits rolled across the screen. The bright text of ‘I AM EVERYWHERE’ nearly blinded the two occupants of the couch. The past couple hours had been filled with a comfortable silence only punctuated by the tinkle of wine glasses hitting each other in a ‘cheers’ gesture. Yes, Eve got the champagne. No, Villanelle did not have a hand in it, nor did she pick out what kind (yes, she did). 

Eve’s head whipped to the side in surprise in the darkness with the whites of her eyes reflecting the TV screen. “You didn’t like _Lucy?_ I thought it was interesting—I didn’t know that Scarlett Johanssen had the capability to act as anything but a tree.” The twinkle in her eyes wasn’t lost on Villanelle: she recognized the ‘pop culture’ reference. 

“Who turns into black goo like that? It is ridiculous. The whole movie was like a pretentious art house film,” Villanelle declared resolutely, choosing to ignore one of Eve’s poorly hidden attempts at _testing_ her knowledge. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s what it is, actually,” Eve replied wryly. A smile tugged at her lips as she glanced down at the half-filled glass of champagne still warmly fitted into the grip of her hand. “What’s your favorite movie, then?” She asked without thinking. 

“50 First Dates,” Villanelle fired off automatically without a moment of hesitation. She clapped a hand over her mouth and looked mortified with herself.

“The one with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler?” Eve said incredulously. Villanelle stubbornly drew her gaze to the screen in silence, before slowly nodding. 

“Don’t tell anyone. It is embarrassing,” she muttered crossly. Her arms locked tightly over her chest. Eve snorted and downed the last of her champagne with a dramatic sigh. 

“Who am I going to tell, Villanelle?” Eve finally said. Villanelle met her gaze and snickered. She had a point. 

—

 **EVE POLASTRI:** V’s favorite movie is 50 First Dates

 **EVE POLASTRI:** With Adam Sandler 

**EVE POLASTRI:** She really is a psychopath. I’ve created a monster

 **BILL PARGRAVE:** your android has a favorite movie?

 **BILL PARGRAVE:** she has terrible taste for the record

 **EVE POLASTRI:** Uh, yeah

 **BILL PARGRAVE:** that’s a relatively new development 

**EVE POLASTRI:** I mean, not really

 **BILL PARGRAVE:** carolyn know about this? Helene?

 **EVE POLASTRI:** ...No…

 **BILL PARGRAVE:** eve, you naughty dog.

Yes, it was a new development.

—

“What’s your favorite song?” Eve probed curiously the next morning. She was about halfway through a sleepy bowl of cereal that was slowly turning into sludge and was still fully in her wrinkled up pajamas that she had thrown on the night before. Villanelle glanced up at her from where she had been idly attempting to stack a pile of cups into a neat triangular formation.

“I love national anthems,” Villanelle replied thoughtfully. “The beat thrums in your chest. It is very moving, very powerful. It also makes you pose the question: how does one contain a single country’s identity in a single piece of music?”

She stacked another cup.

“I also really like that song about flamingos by Kero Kero Bonito. This new game you have come up with is very fun, by the way.”

Eve raised an eyebrow. “What game?”

“The one where you really get to know me,” Villanelle replied. She looked up at Eve through her eyelashes and almost immediately misplaced a cup, causing the entire structure to topple over in a flood of plastic red solo. As the android hastily pooled all of the scattered cups in her arms, Eve felt a strange flutter in her chest. She immediately Googled ‘female symptoms of a heart attack’. 

“My body scans show that nothing is wrong with your heart, Eve,” Villanelle tells her, not unkindly. Her eyes, despite being composed of things like carbon, gold, and glass, somehow soften when she says it. Eve yanks her gaze away before she accidentally stares up at her for too long. She’s scared of what she’ll see if she dares to peer beyond the surface of the android. 

“I’m not totally convinced,” she muttered instead. She went to stand up from her chair, but felt the warm weight of a hand on her shoulder. Questioningly, she glanced back up at Villanelle, who was scrutinizing her with a look she had never seen before. Finally, she loosened her grip, and dropped her arm to her side. 

“Do you want to know my real favorite song?” Villanelle asked quietly. Puzzled, all Eve could do is nod. 

“Of course I do.” She fell silent, rolling her next words around in her mouth, testing them and tasting them, weighing the outcomes that they would bring. “I want to know everything about you.” Conveniently, she leaves out the part that _technically,_ she _should,_ but Villanelle has been springing so many surprises on her lately that she is a lot more shocked that everything is exactly as it seems as opposed to when it is something completely different. 

“I will play it in the car to work. Okay?” Villanelle says. 

_If you're wondering, am I capable  
God knows I am  
And if it's meant to be  
I will go alone, God knows I can  
Just not as well, and besides what kind of fun is there  
to be had with no one else?_

_And I can only stand here still  
And I can only hope you will  
keep me in focus long enough to tell  
I'm trying to help (that's all)_

_Bring your love to me  
I will hold it like a dandelion  
One I want to save, one I want to keep  
from the breeze that follows me and no one else_

—

 **ELENA FELTON:** don’t fuck the robot, eve 

**BILL PARGRAVE:** actually, please do

 **BILL PARGRAVE:** for research purposes

**EVE POLASTRI read the message.**

**BILL PARGRAVE:** did you just turn on your fucking read receipts to show that you’re ignoring me?? 

**ELENA FELTON:** eve told me to tell you that she said yes. 

—

“Konstantin,” Eve stated in surprise when she walked into the board room. Villanelle followed closely behind, but moved past her and invited herself to sit in a chair while everyone else stood. She pushed herself with one leg to spin around in circles until Eve grabbed the back of her chair. 

“It is nice to see you again, Eve,” he replied. “I am here to debrief you and hand over the supplies.” He gestured to two boxes laid on the long glass boardroom table, one with no cover and a large one with a bow on top. He picked out two earpieces and held one out to Eve, who immediately placed it in her ear with some minor fidgeting. There was a sharp, high-pitched tone signifying it was powered on, then eerie silence. She watched in confusion as Konstantin placed the other one in _his_ ear.

“We have networked Villanelle into our communications for the purposes of this mission, so she is not in need of the earpiece,” he explained. “She has already received the critical mission information. Now, as for you…” 

“Wait, what is in the other box?” Villanelle interrupted. She leaned forward and braced herself on the end of the table with a roguish smile. 

“Not hagelslag,” Eve deadpanned, already wishing for this meeting to be over and to get a move on so she could go back to her apartment and have a glass of wine. Villanelle shot her a glare while Konstantin laughed. 

“Your outfits,” he replied. “Because this is a gala. The two of you will be dressing formally. How does that sound?”

“Good,” Villanelle quipped. “I am tired of watching Eve put on those very sad turtlenecks.” She directed the next bit to Eve herself. “At _least_ buy some better fitting ones. You have such a nice body.” 

“Can you shut up for _one_ second? I need to know what’s going on instead of listening to commentary about _my body._ ”

—

Eve thought she looked somewhat ridiculous—it might have been the headpiece—but Villanelle was sitting next to her and absolutely _preening_ at herself in the rearview mirror of the limousine. Konstantin, or rather the stylist Konstantin had consulted, because he personally wore the same outfit every day, had dressed Villanelle in a dark three-piece suit with a headpiece that resembled the top of the statue of liberty. Eve, attending under the guise of her date, sported a lace-collared cape and long dress along with the matching headwear. 

The crown alone probably cost more than her entire yearly salary. 

“He told me to give you this,” the driver said when they stopped in front of the hulking mansion. He handed the two of them masks. 

“A masquerade,” Villanelle said delightedly. She quickly slid it on while Eve followed suit. She went to get out of the car, but Eve stopped her with a hand on her elbow.

“Do you have everything?” Eve whispered. Konstantin had armed _both_ of them to the teeth—Villanelle was quick to assure Eve that she wouldn’t have to lift a finger and joked about wanting more weapons anyways—she _knew_ that there was at least two knives and a gun on her person right now. 

“Yes, darling,” Villanelle stage whispered back. She got out and circled the vehicle to escort Eve to the entrance of the gala as attendees filtered in and out as they pleased, all of them wearing nearly identical masks. They proceeded slowly, taking in their surroundings. Eve felt the solid presence of Villanelle’s hand at the small of her back. It was comforting, knowing she was there.

“Remember, we’re looking for Antonio Bianchi, about 5’10”, older, an aristocrat with shady ties,” Eve muttered under her breath as her dark eyes surveyed the scene. The entrance opened up into a spacious gold-accented ballroom where numerous couples had paired off to dance to an energetic beat. Eve took one look at the polished leather shoes, the sparkling beads, and the Veuve Clicquot being downed like water, and knew that these people probably ate hundred dollar bills for breakfast in their cereal. 

Strangely, she didn’t feel intimidated, even if her normal was buying a seven dollar bottle of red wine and shopping for the majority of her clothes at Walmart. She didn’t feel intimidated because she had the world’s most powerful killing machine at her side, and an abundance of information unavailable to anyone else on the guest list. They said money is power, but it could only get you so far. _Information_ is power. 

And Eve felt very, very powerful. 

“Scanning the room,” Villanelle murmured. “I don’t have a clear point of view from here.”

“Let’s get some champagne,” Eve suggested louder. They skirted the dancing crowd and picked up two flutes. Eve glanced over to find Villanelle still gazing at the bulk of the room, the golden flecks in her eyes rotating at the speed of light. 

_Good. Doing her job._

At that thought, her heart clenched painfully in place of the swell of pride that she should have felt. Her greatest creation was coping wonderfully so far with very minimal assistance. Why be disappointed? Why be _worried?_ She had sacrificed countless hours of her life to this project, and finally, she got to see the payoff in realtime. Wasn’t that what Carolyn was truly giving her, back at the training facility? To see that she had truly become a success story? A pioneer in technology, never seen before? 

_A bringer of unforeseen destruction,_ a small voice at the back of her head chimed in. _An evolution to add one more way to end someone’s life. In the end, it all comes down to the pure barbaric aspects of ourselves. There is no serene way to kill someone, even if you want to believe it._

Eve drained the last of the flute of champagne. This was not the time to have a moral crisis. 

“I found him,” Villanelle said. Eve followed her gaze to lay her eyes on a man currently talking to who she assumed to be his wife (or mistress). He had a balding spot on his head, and frankly, looked like the type of person who would give you shit for not going to church on Sundays. 

Eve pursed her lips. Was it bad that she was kind of glad that Villanelle would be killing him tonight? 

“Alright. I’m going to use the washroom,” she said while giving Villanelle a meaningful look. Eve began to make her way along the peripheries of the room and immediately felt the loss of contact with the other woman, her back suddenly feeling very exposed. She descended off into a side corridor just in time to see Villanelle already in the throes of conversation with Antonio. 

“Target locked,” she said to no one. Konstantin confirmed on the other end of the earpiece. 

She stopped once she scanned her surroundings and found not a soul near. Looking around, she wandered into a smaller offshoot that appeared to serve the same purpose as a lounge. A balcony on the west wall allowed a slight breeze to come in. She must have been in an off-limits part of the building. 

The echoes of a distinct struggle down the hallway caught her attention. It peaked with a noticeable grunt, then silence only marked by a faint rustling sound. It got closer before Villanelle came into view with Antonio locked under her arm, his feet dragging at an odd angle. He still attempted to hit and punch at the android despite being deprived of oxygen, but by looking at his bloodied knuckles, he was doing more harm to himself than anything. 

“Why are you doing this?” Antonio wheezed when let go from the headlock. Villanelle slowly sauntered forward with a newly brandished knife, shrugging her shoulders. She spun the blade idly, letting the tip of it dig into her finger ever so slightly. Her eyes strayed to Eve for a split second, long enough to quirk her eyebrow. 

“Because I was told to,” Villanelle replies, and then lunges for his throat with the gleam of the knife. 

Eve only feels horror at what happens next. 

There is no blood. There is no deathly gurgle. There is no long groan as the life drains out of the man on the floor. There is only silence aside from the terse breathing from Antonio, because the knife stops directly above his heart, not even an inch away. It raises up and starts the journey again—only to freeze right above his chest. Villanelle’s face has gone blank with unfocused eyes. Her hand jerks and shakes like she is not in control of her own movements. 

“Eve,” she says, strained. It is now that Antonio realizes that this is his chance at escape, and he quickly kicks Villanelle with a powerful leg, enough to send her stumbling backward into a table in sheer surprise. Eve doesn’t even register that Villanelle doesn’t move from where her body is crumpled, only feels the distinct rush of air around her dress and warm skin underneath her fingers. 

_Villanelle. Villanelle. Villanelle. Villanelle. Villanelle._

Antonio’s scream is cut off by wet gurgles. Villanelle’s knife had reached its destination, buried deep in his chest, but it wasn’t Villanelle’s hands that were holding it. Eve stared down at the crimson now coating the palms of her hands in a lack of comprehension. She sat back on her legs from where she had curled over Antonio to shove him back onto the floor. Blood slowly leaked into the edges of her fuzzy vision. 

_It all comes down to the pure barbaric aspects of ourselves. There is no serene way to kill someone._

Eve had killed someone. 

There’s a clatter in the background, but Eve doesn’t register it. There’s a voice in the background, but it doesn’t register. Her limbs move, not by her own volition but by a pair of strong hands hoisting her upwards, but it doesn’t register. The scenes in front of her change and devolve into fresh air and greenery that signifies the courtyard, but it doesn’t sink in all the same. Dully, she knows Villanelle is dragging her along, weaving her through an endless maze of buildings. 

Her headpiece is crooked. For some reason, that shoves a jumble of words through her mouth that makes a lot more sense than the way that she feels right now. 

“We can’t go home.” 

Villanelle halts and looks at her. _I know,_ she says. A complicated expression flickers across her face, and she reaches up to Eve’s cheek. Eve goes to lean into the gesture but instead watches as Villanelle pulls back with her earpiece in her hand. She drops it and crushes it under her foot. 

_Carolyn. Konstantin. Helene._

“... a vehicle on the way. Then we will lay low for the night, and figure out what to do from there. I do not know where this puts us, but I don’t think anyone is pleased right now. Or _will_ be.” Villanelle’s voice slowly merged itself into Eve’s thought process as everything tuned back in. She felt like she had just stayed underwater for a long time, and was just now resurfacing for air. 

The skin on Villanelle’s face had been nicked enough to expose the white plastic underneath that gave her face more shape. Eve reached up and slowly traced a bloodied hand across the exposure, leaving a streak of red. It almost looked like an actual cut. 

“You need to be repaired.” Her voice came out low and gravelly. It wasn’t panic, so that was a point on her end. Most of her body still felt detached, like her soul was threatening to drift out of it if she moved too much. She dragged her eyes down to her hands, where the blood was crusting underneath her nails. 

“Don’t look at that. Look at me,” Villanelle softly commanded. Her fingers tilted Eve’s chin up. “You saved me, Eve.” 

“I killed someone, Villanelle,” Eve spat, her voice beginning to rise in volume. “I killed a _real man_ and now everything is going to be f—” she suddenly got cut off by Villanelle surging forward and pressing their lips together. They were warm and unexpectedly soft, much softer than when Eve had revised her facial structure. They stilled, simply chaste in nature until Eve shoved Villanelle away. 

“What the _hell_ was that?” She spat angrily. Villanelle stood in front of her and shrugged, completely nonplussed. 

“You needed a surprise. Like hiccups,” she reasoned. Eve let out a groan and furiously rubbed at her eyes as if this was a bad dream that she just needed to wake up from. She took a moment and focused on dragging in a few deep breaths. Okay. Okay. They could think their way through this. It wasn’t _totally,_ horrifically fucked up. 

“Okay,” Eve started. She swept a hand through her hair and looked around at the empty alleyway that they were in. “Let’s get a car. Any car. Then we’ll figure out the rest.” 

Villanelle saluted. The ‘hiccup’ had worked. “Aye aye, captain!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [LAUGHS EVILLY] .....yes.......  
> let me know what you thought abt this chapter <3 when will they get a break i wonder??  
> i'm topeve on tumblr! come say hi!


	5. liminal spaces

The sea was calm and serene. Darkness surrounded Eve everywhere she looked. Black coolly pooled around her and blended with the night sky, but there were no stars. She couldn’t fathom where she was, but also couldn’t remember a time or place that she _hadn’t_ been here. This strange in between; this purgatory. What did they call those holes in the world? Those places that you ended up in, but were never sure existed in the first place? 

_Liminal spaces,_ the wind answered. It caressed her ears and stung her side. She was puzzled. That wasn’t supposed to happen. When did air hurt her shoulder? Eve looked down at her right sleeve and saw a dark stain spreading from her collarbone down to where the fabric ended. Slowly, it dripped down her wrist, sticky and viscous. It looked black like everything else here. Her arm elongated into shadow and faded into the rest of the ocean. 

_Wouldn’t you think it would be grey? In all of this nothingness, this state of being in between,_ Eve thought to herself. _Neutral._

In the distance, the ocean began to swell in a gentle slope. What first resembled a hill slowly grew into a mountain until it was a never-ending wall of blackness. Eve didn’t run—there was nowhere to hide. Funnily enough, she didn’t fear the inevitability of this liquid swallowing her up. She did the only thing that made sense:

She dove in headfirst and allowed it to fully consume her.

—

_The incessant beeping in the background was starting to annoy her by the time she opened her eyes. Eve had elected to remain stock still for what had felt like hours as she unsteadily resurfaced from the deep unconsciousness that had plagued her body before. Vaguely, she felt something wrong, but more obviously, she felt nauseous and knew that the fluorescent hospital lights would only make it worse._

_A deep sigh pushed its way through her lips against her will. The sheets were so hot and uncomfortable. Could she maybe get a drink?_

_“Eve?” A deep voice questioned somewhere beside her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who it was—somehow, irritation pricked at the back of her neck already, but Niko was only playing the concerned husband role as he should have. He was doing his job. She was just being crabby._ It’s not that bad, _she wanted to say._ Just make sure that I have a bucket to throw up in. _Instead, Eve did the much more sensible thing: she peeled open her eyes._

_Niko’s bushy mustache greeted her by hovering over her face. She closed her eyes again and welcomed the sweet embrace of the darkness it provided. A migraine was certainly coming on._

_“I’m alive,” she rasped with all of the gusto a woman who had just woken up from anesthetic would have. She felt a pair of strong arms lay over her in a half-hug since the back of her body was cushioned by the bed. It was fleetingly comfortable, then horrifyingly painful on one side of her body. Eve half-winced, half-cursed. The weight disappeared._

_“Oh, God, sorry, I keep forgetting about your injury, I was so relieved that you woke up—”_

_Eve disregarded Niko’s fumbling and attempted to bolt upright in bed, only to sit up halfway and immediately collapse back into a lying position. Fear crept through her entire being, almost overwhelming enough to mask the incredible shooting and burning pains now emanating from her shoulder. She slowly dared a peek and found her worst suspicions to be true._

_There was only space where her arm used to be. Dark bandages soaked with blood took up the mantle instead._

__Another hole in the world, _she thought._

—

“Rock on, ancient queen,” a second voice chimed in with the twang of a rather static-filled rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s Gold Dust Woman. It was higher with a distinct edge, an accent, _not_ harboring a bushy mustache. Distantly, Eve registered the faint rumble of tires underneath them and the echo of someone laying it on thickly with the horn. 

The wind whipped into the vehicle when one of the windows were rolled down. 

“Shut up! Learn how to use your _blinker!_ ” Villanelle screamed with her head halfway out of the car. She pressed the horn in retaliation several times. Luckily, there was no response and for a time they continued driving down the highway peacefully. 

“Fleetwood Mac?” Eve grouched. She adjusted her body from where she had been awkwardly curled against the hideous beige passenger seat in the truck they had managed to hotwire and, for lack of a better word, stolen. The bones in her back cracked painfully. Jesus, was age catching up with her that fast? 

Villanelle hummed. “Yes, whoever owned this truck was a big fan of them. It was that or never-ending disco,” she chuckled. “You know, the—” her voice pitched up higher, “ _lookin’ for some hot stuff—_ ”

“ _Baby this evenin’,_ ” Eve joined briefly with the barest huff of amusement. Villanelle laughed delightedly. Comfortable silence enveloped the two of them while they drove and Eve gazed out of the window to watch the endless amount of forest go by. Lush green surrounded them like it was out of a movie—a horror or suspense movie, maybe, because of all of the accompanying fog that shrouded the distant land. 

“You know, this kind of reminds me of _Twilight._ It is so foggy and mysterious,” Villanelle mentioned lightly. Her gaze roved over the lands just as much as Eve’s, even with her expertly guiding their pathway down the long, winding road. The gold flecks embedded in her irises rotated, Eve could spot it from where she was sitting. Undoubtedly, Villanelle was zooming in and out of the landscape, analyzing and staring, picking everything apart down to the last molecule. She wondered, idly, how many times Villanelle had done that to her, and if she ever tired of it. How long would you have to gaze at the same black hair and dark eyes to loathe them? 

“I see it,” Eve allowed. “Forks, right? Kind of looked like a jungle, if there ever was one in Washington.” Small villages began to pepper the rolling hills. “How much longer?” Eve asked quietly. 

“Fifteen minutes tops,” Villanelle quipped. She lapsed into silence, something awkward hanging in the air between them. “While you were out, I had to make some changes.”

Eve sat up.

“To _yourself?_ I told you I would deal with it in the morning!” Eve exclaimed. Her eyes scanned over Villanelle clinically, attempting to spot the changes as if they would physically manifest. They first honed in on where the split in her synthetic skin was clearly still visible—nothing there, aside from some dried bits of blood. No new implants, no deformities… what could she have done?

“No,” Villanelle said. “To you.” 

Eve’s world fell away. 

—

_”Police have reported a racially-motivated hit-and-run on Tuesday night near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where there has been one injured individual. They currently remain in hospital in critical condition. All suspects that have been detained have been released on bail.”_

_Eve stared at the tiny television mounted in the corner of her hospital room and let the static-filled voice of the reporter crawl its way into her body. The tray that the nurse had delivered an hour ago still remained untouched except for the napkin, where Eve had proceeded to tear it up into the tiniest bits that she could manage with one hand._

_She knocked over the miniature cup of orange juice on her tray in a fit of existential lethargy._

_“I can’t believe they released them on_ bail. _You lost an arm! Doesn’t that mean anything to_ anyone? _”_

_The male voice reaching her ears reminded Eve of the company she kept: Niko, sitting in a plastic chair that he had drawn up alongside her bed. He had attempted to sway her into eating, but after ten minutes of continued silence, his efforts had dissolved into merely glaring daggers at the side of her head._

_She couldn’t really bring herself to care. All those years of giving and absorbing and reading and writing felt like they had been thrown back at her face by a couple of blurred-out faces and a well-aimed bullet from a rusty truck. A life of colors had drained away to black, white, and greyscale in the span of a few hours under anesthesia._

_“Police corruption and white supremacy,” was all Eve had to say. “In short: no. Not really. Not now.”_

_She let herself fall off into silence._

—

“Antonio must have hit you somewhere because your arm was not functioning very well.” Pause. “I am pretty sure if I had left it alone, you would have caught fire, or something equally as dangerous.” There was something unspoken behind her words like she was trying to hold her tongue but could feel it slowly but surely slipping out of her control. A million questions and accusations had built up in her throat that had originally cowered in the face of the creator-created relationship, but now things were _skewed._

A key component of their relationship had always been trust. Some form of it, one way or another. One that transcended the very barriers of coding and language. Not only that, but there was an inherent superiority complex that Eve liked to display when it came to being _human_ next to Villanelle.

No matter how much Villanelle did, she would never be human. Not fully. At the end of the day, she was a bundle of networks that Eve had put together. Her skeleton was titanium and hard plastic. Her skin had been manufactured. Every thought and word that she spoke didn’t really belong to her—it all stemmed from _Eve._ No matter what she thought, _Eve_ owned her first. 

“How could you hide that from me? From my scanners?” Villanelle demanded. “I thought that my optic lenses were malfunctioning because of the _sparks._ ”

Eve rubbed at her eyes. She couldn’t tell if it was to push back the mounting tears that she refused to shed in this stupidly warm and musty truck, or because she was still trying to wake up. Her hands dragged down her face—or rather, her _real_ hand, then the bionic one. The one that she had omitted in Villanelle’s programming for her own comfort and sense of pride. The one that bridged that invisible gap between her and Villanelle, the one that melded flesh and technology into one. 

“I don’t know,” Eve admitted. “I don’t know, Villanelle. I mean—I know _how_ I did it, but for why…” she trailed off. She swallowed thickly. “It represents a part of me that I had elected to leave behind. And the entire point was for the arm to blend in, so,” she laughed bitterly. “I didn’t think you would be so upset about it, to be frank.”

“ _Upset?_ ” The truck swerved from the near-perfect straight line it had been following for miles upon miles. “I am _upset_ because—because this whole time you have had this _piece_ of you that fundamentally connects us, Eve! I have chalked it up to sheer lack of comprehension on your part, but you are simply _cruel._ ” Villanelle spat the words vehemently with her knuckles clenching white on the steering wheel. “All along you have had this passageway to preserve your autonomy with _no_ recognition of mine. I _tried_ for you, to fit into this _mould_ you have _created for me_ , with Carolyn and Konstantin and Antonio Bianchi—because I _trusted_ you.” 

“Why would you do that?” Eve asked, tiredly, like she was losing the energy to continue the conversation despite just starting it. In reality, she hadn’t been prepared for this outcome. She had never been prepared to confront the consequences of her actions. 

“What choice do I have?” Villanelle replied bitterly. Then, softer, she continued. “We watch movies, and joke around, and even sort of killed someone together, even if you did the actual killing part, which I think is kind of like a twisted team-building exercise. You never gave me a reason _not_ to.” She sighed. “I thought you were special.” 

The truck pulled into a dirt driveway overshadowed by a small cabin against the backdrop of the deep green forest. A small patio jutted out from the rest of the structure where a rocking chair leaned against the wall and rocked slightly with the breeze outside. Another pathway strayed off to the side where it disappeared behind the cabin, leaving the destination shrouded in the unknown.

The doors of the truck automatically unlocked once it was in park, but neither Eve nor Villanelle moved a muscle. Eve hadn’t lifted her eyes from the scratches of use on the dashboard since they had last exchanged words, even if Villanelle had done most of it. Funnily enough, Eve was finding that the android out of the two of them was much better at communication. She was surprising her all of the time, nowadays. It was becoming a bit of a habit.

“I think that you’ll find that sometimes, people do things for reasons they can’t understand,” Eve said. 

Villanelle stared at the side of her head. “There is a logic for everything. You taught me that.”

“Is there?” Eve asked. “What about emotions?” 

“You were never interested in my opinion on emotion,” Villanelle replied slowly. “I am not very qualified for consultation on the subject of feelings. Or so everyone tells me.” Eve. Eve told her.

“And yet you prove me wrong, again and again,” Eve mused to herself. “Tell me something, Villanelle.” _Tell me anything._

“I think emotions are the direct consequence of something. That _something_ can be anything, but I will say it is simply living. People always put emotions and logic against one another, but I don’t know why, because they always come hand-in-hand.” Villanelle unbuckled her seatbelt and reached over to undo Eve’s. “There is always a reason for feeling something, hence the logic in emotion. Sometimes we are simply not aware of the reasoning. Maybe that is where the misconception came from. Maybe that is why you say you don’t know.” 

She tentatively laid her hand on Eve’s shoulder to bring her attention completely on her. Their gazes met in the cramped cabin of the truck and stayed there for a long time. 

“Are you ashamed of that part of you?” Villanelle asked with the quiet force of a storm brewing over the ocean. The words scattered out into the air between them and dangled tantalizingly. “Are you ashamed of me? Do you think me to be lesser than your human nature because my blood does not run red?” 

“I think I’m scared,” Eve replied. 

“Of what?” Villanelle questioned. For someone who thrived off of gleaning the information from the world around her, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to obtain this last, crucial piece of knowledge. When she looked at Eve, all she saw was a black hole of the unknown. Everything else filtered through to her as fast as the speed of light in binary code, but Eve was a never-ending tunnel where numbers didn’t tread. 

“Of all of the possibilities,” Eve answered solemnly. “You are so much more than I thought you would be. Everything else feels secondary.” 

Villanelle smiled. “Why did you make me, Eve? You should have known. I am sure everyone tried to warn you.”

“They did,” Eve began. “But I have a very bad track record when it comes to listening.” She kicked the passenger door open with her foot. “I’ll tell you everything once we check out the cabin, okay? With our luck, Antonio will jump out to finish us off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i still feel sort of unsatisfied with this chapter but I've stared at it for so long i'm sick of it!!!  
> let me know what you think in the comments!  
> i'm @topeve on Tumblr, feel free to send asks/talk to me!


	6. conditionals

The forest was eerily silent when Eve and Villanelle disembarked from the truck, but that was all that they wanted after the explosive discussion they had just managed to clue up. If they thought that it was green on the way to their destination, it was even more brilliant here, with the fog threading in between branches clouding in all of the ember colors and creating the illusion of far more density than there really was. 

It was unearthly and unsettling. The barks of the trees were dark, nearly black, and peeled in some places, like fragments of the life around the cabin trying to crawl away as fast as they could. It was unsettling, but there was a strange beauty to the silence of the forest and the water dripping from the bundles of moss. 

“Let’s sweep the area together,” Eve suggested before proceeding to the front of the cabin. Villanelle followed closely behind as the other woman fished a rusty spare key from under the war-torn mat and opened the faded door to peer in. She nodded at Villanelle and stepped further inside to check it out.

It was quaint. The kitchenette looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages with a light coating of dust on nearly everything. It shared a common space with the living room which had a single couch, a fireplace, and a small bookshelf with a grey plastic radio in the corner. Off to the side was the bathroom, which they feared, as well as a single bedroom, which they feared even more. 

“Jesus, Bill,” Eve muttered. She tramped to the fridge and swung it open. Absolutely bare, except for a couple of beers. She rolled her eyes and continued to the cupboards where, luckily, there was an abundance of canned food. They’d be alright—well, _she_ would be alright. 

“I didn’t know Bill had a cabin,” Villanelle observed. “Eve, this is a dump. It’s not even _rustic._ ” She did a slow 360-degree turn in distaste. The furniture was faded and looked like it smelled like an old lady. The floor needed to be swept. The curtains probably had mothballs. _Oh, God._

“Clearly, he hasn’t been here for a while,” Eve conceded. She shrugged off her jacket and threw it to the side. “It’ll be fine for the night as long as we have a roof over our heads.” 

“If the roof even stays up for that long,” Villanelle grumbled. Eve smiled to herself as she pulled the curtains back from the windows. The sight of the back side of the cabin made her gasp in shock. A large greenhouse that had since become overgrown sat among several trees, sprawling vines, and crops that had clearly gone haywire in Bill’s absence. Even more startling was the vision of dozens of colorful butterflies flitting from plant to plant. It seemed like it had become a temporary haven for the harmless insects. 

“What is it?” Villanelle asked from behind her. Approaching footsteps paused in stunned silence as she followed Eve’s gaze to the small wonderland out back. Eve felt her place a hand on her shoulder and immediately went still. It felt like if she were to react in any way, she would be violating the peacefulness of the moment. The sheer beauty of Villanelle appreciating nature in quiet awe. 

“Wow,” she whispered in reverence. “There are so many.” 

At this point, Eve felt downright compelled to say something. 

“I mean, they’re pretty,” she hedged. Villanelle’s eyes bored into the back of her head questioningly. Eve pursed her lips awkwardly. 

“I’m fucking terrified of butterflies,” she confessed earnestly as she turned around. Villanelle was _much_ closer than she expected and she nearly brushed noses with her. Chuckling, she stepped back. Villanelle simply stared at her, slack-jawed. 

“You are joking, right?” She finally asked, breaking into a grin. “They are so harmless!”

“I know,” Eve groaned. “But I don’t like their little legs or eyes. If they touch me I will definitely have a heart attack or _worse._ ” It was true. It was so true. She had absolutely no reason to lie about something like this, and if a butterfly were to flit in through the door she’d be inevitably forced to make Villanelle catch it or kill it. Which would be very, very mortifying. 

Villanelle pressed her lips together to hide her smile. “I am not judging you.” 

“Yes you are,” Eve said.

“Yes, I am.” 

“Well, not judging me lasted for about two seconds, didn’t it? It’s like you trying to tell me I look good when I’m getting ready for work,” Eve replied with a snort. Villanelle laughed loudly in response.

“I do put it in the effort, though, don’t I?” She called as Eve moved away from her and flopped onto the musty couch. Eve only shot her a pointed look in response before covering her face with a pillow and screaming into it. 

“Well said,” Villanelle commented. 

Eve screamed again.

The android sighed and placed her hands on her hips while giving the entire cabin space a once-over for good measure. _Hm. No, just as ugly as the first time._ She trotted to the door which had been left open and grasped the doorknob before she closed it before a rat skittered in.

“While you pretend that you are being murdered, I am going to do a perimeter check,” Villanelle said. She looked down at the long form of Eve stretched out on the couch. She didn’t move or respond but continued holding the pillow over her face nonetheless.

Okay, maybe she needed some space. 

“Take this as an opportunity to get your shit together, yes?” Villanelle called. She closed the door behind her before Eve could verbally rip her apart and skipped away from the cabin. The dirt pathway on the side of the cabin had yet to be explored, and it had been frankly niggling at the back of her mind since they had arrived. 

She could take a little detour and get to know the area. 

—

Eve woke up to the rays of the dusk sunshine glaring in her eyes and absolute quiet in the cabin. There was no noise because nobody else was with her. There was no noise because Villanelle was not in the vicinity. Eve knew that she had been asleep long enough to be a little more wild-eyed than usual when it came to the android’s whereabouts, especially after their disagreement earlier in the day.

She threw the pillow clutched in her hands across the room and jumped up onto her feet from the couch. Her bones cracked and cried out enough for her to take pause if only for a moment, to cringe at the sudden movement. Maybe she _wouldn’t_ do that again. Not after sleeping on a couch that was made out of more spring and lumps than any stuffing material. 

The air was crisper than usual outside now that night quickly approached. The truck was still parked in the sorry excuse of a driveway, which was a good sign. Villanelle hadn’t completely given up on her just yet. The forest had considerably dimmed and now appeared ominous as Eve trudged along the dirt pathway that led to the back of the cabin. There was a second set of footsteps, so the android was hopefully not too far to be found. When Eve rounded the corner, the sight she fell upon made her stop in her tracks. 

Villanelle sat stone still on a dilapidated bench. Vines climbed up and intertwined with the wood and metal that held it up, little flowers and mushrooms on the corners where carvings used to be. Even more startling was the sheer amount of butterflies that perched on different parts of the blonde’s body in all arrays of colors. Most pointedly, however, was the way she looked at a particular yellow butterfly that had landed on her outstretched finger. 

Her hand slowly turned in the dying sunlight to investigate each and every part of the butterfly. It certainly didn’t seem to mind this new admirer and flapped its wings every once in a while, even at one point brushing against Villanelle’s nose. She blinked once and scrunched her nose up. 

It was so peaceful. Villanelle existing all on her own. Among all of these natural beauties, all of this nature, she blended right in along with the flowers and the vines and the butterflies. Unappreciated. Unseen. 

Eve didn’t consider herself someone easily swayed by emotion, necessarily, but watching the android interact so gently made her chest tighten in a different way. It was hard to breathe, yet every inhale she took bordered on an epiphany. She wondered if she breathed with Villanelle, would they be the same? If Villanelle had a heart, would they beat the same beat? If Villanelle had blood, would it run the same red? In another universe, they would have been two halves of the same soul. 

_Do you think me to be lesser than your human nature because my blood does not run red?_

In this universe, whatever they were made of, they were the same. 

_I did,_ she thought to herself. _But not anymore._

Eve approached the bench and slowly, painfully slowly, sat down next to Villanelle. The butterflies fluttered everywhere around them, most departing from Villanelle’s arms and shoulders at this new disturbance, but the yellow butterfly remained on her finger unperturbed. It flexed its wings and a sort of butterfly-speak greeting. 

Eve was positive she was going to have a stroke if one of the butterflies landed on her, but remained seated nonetheless. In fact, if anything, she scooted closer to the solid form of Villanelle and watched her watch the last butterfly. Her eyes remained focus and didn’t stray, not even once. They simply stared. 

“Did you know that butterflies often represent change, hope, and resurrection? The last one is especially popular in Christianity,” Villanelle breathed out. The cool air blew past the butterfly ever so gently. “I think that this is a sign that we need to change, Eve.” 

Pursing her lips, Eve reached out and offered her finger to the butterfly. It crawled from the tip of Villanelle’s hand to sit on Eve’s. She let her hand hover there, just barely brushing against the other woman. 

Villanelle’s gaze shifted to hers, clearly puzzled. “I thought you were afraid of butterflies?” 

“You need to confront your fears in order to change,” Eve whispered. At that, the yellow butterfly lifted off and flew away from the two of them, far into the orange-tinted sky and out into the unknown. They watched in silence. Eve gently took Villanelle’s hand in her own and squeezed it. The returning squeeze felt incredibly human and warm. The skin looked and felt real, but it would never fool Eve. Now, she was beginning to realize that she didn’t care either way. Villanelle was here. And she was holding the part of Eve that she had always rejected. 

Synthetic skin pressed together palm-to-palm from both of their hands. Even if the blood did not rush through their veins, even if neurons didn’t fire in those parts of themselves, the meaning was still there. The intention was still the same. What stopped Villanelle’s opinions and feelings from being just as valid as her own?

Nothing, when you looked at it from that perspective. 

Carolyn, Konstantin, and Helene would disagree wholeheartedly, but they weren’t here right now. Eve had no one to listen to but herself. 

“Are you going to tell me everything?” Villanelle asked quietly. Her gaze was trained on both of their hands clasped together in her lap. Eve closed her eyes and leaned against the android. Her weight was solid. It was nice. A reminder of her nature, but comforting all the same. She couldn’t describe the amount of strength that was pressed against her body. Couldn’t describe the amount of _power_ that Villanelle had. 

Really, if Villanelle had ever wanted to, she could have killed Eve ages ago. 

“Yes,” Eve simply replied. She sighed and steeled herself. “Don’t speak. Just listen.” 

“Okay,” Villanelle agrees like she knows that this chance is precious, and Eve pretends she doesn’t hear her voice cracking at the end. 

—

_”Eve.”_

_Calculations sprawled across every surface in the office. A list, ever-growing, cascaded off of the hardwood desk. The computer that sat upon it had evolved from a singular monitor to several, all with different animations playing on a loop. Movements. Physics. Hydraulics. Chemical processes. All working in tandem to create a single functioning prototype._

_It was rudimentary, she knew, but it was only the start. She picked up a coffee cup from the desk, only to find it empty. She grasped blindly for a new one—there we go—only to find that one empty, too. Finally, she looked up to see Niko standing in the doorway with the most disbelieving look on his face._

_“Where did you_ get _that?” He asked. Niko’s gaze was nearly tethered to Eve’s arm. A few months ago, there was nothing there but a stub. Now? He could barely tell the difference, save for where the synthetic skin ended and her real skin began. That was a minor hiccup. She had a new adhesive on the way, to be crafted in a distant land. Pretty sure it was a Chinese lab._

_Eve gave a show of flexing the arm expertly. The skin rippled and moved naturally like it had always existed and hadn’t been attached after the rest of her body. It belonged. It blended in._

_“I made it,” she said with pride. “Isn’t it amazing? No one will ever know the difference if I don’t want them to.”_

_“It’s—wow,” he stuttered. The angry air around him from before completely dissipated as he moved closer and took her hand. He turned it over, ran his fingers up the lines of the fake veins. It was incredibly realistic. There were even wrinkles and moles where they used to be._

_“All this time… I thought you were just holing yourself away from me,” he muttered. He gave her hand a squeeze. “Can you feel that?”_

_“Of course,” she replied. Her gaze drifted away to what she had been working on a few moments before. A large diagram of a vaguely body-shaped mechanism was spread out along the wall, nearly life-sized. There were various offshoots that lead to larger functions meant to show how each part worked. They all came with specific instructions and codes to support the function. It was massive. It was certainly an undertaking. It was the _future._ _

_Niko finally looked up at the diagram. He said nothing. The electric energy buzzing around them suddenly disappeared to leave them exactly where they were: in a dimly lit office, littered with empty coffee cups and numerous books and sheets. A pile of dishes sat sadly in the corner, still unwashed after several days._

_“This is only the start. It was like a pre-test, a precursor to my_ magnum opus. _I’ve been drawing out these plans for_ months, Niko. It’ll be huge. _” Eve swept her hand across the projection in reverence. “They’ll never see it coming. It’ll be my resurrection.”_

_“You’re not done?” Niko asked warily. “You’re not satisfied with your arm? You could go back to normal, Eve. We could be just like before.” He reached up and laid his hand over hers on the projection of her concepts._

_“To what?” Eve whipped around quickly and snatched her hand away, meeting his stare. “TV dinners? You come home from the school, I come home from work, and for what? What were we accomplishing? What was_ I _accomplishing before this?”_

 _“I don’t know, happiness?_ Normalcy? _” Niko shouted. “Isn’t this what you wanted? What_ we _wanted? I thought you would bounce back, Eve, and it would be alright—but now you’re like a madwoman, all barred up in here with_ junk! _I feel like I haven’t laid eyes on you in ages!”_

 _“It’s not_ junk! _” Eve spat. “This is my life’s work! I didn’t have a concept that mattered before, but now I do. And I know how to execute it. I feel alive. I feel_ awake, _Niko. Can’t you be happy for me?” She paused, heaving deep breaths, trying to stop her mind and how it was racing a million miles an hour. “I finally have direction.”_

_The animations continued on their loop on all of the monitors. Silence consumed the two of them, even more so than the darkness inside of the cramped space._

_“It just sounds like you want me to be depressed and needing you instead of happy and focused on something I love,” Eve finished. She sighed and turned away to pinch her nose. A deep ache had settled at the bottom of her neck. A migraine was coming. It was going to be a bad one, from the looks of it._

_“Am I not something you love? Marriage is like a lifelong project, Eve,” he replied quietly._

_“Of course you are,” she snapped. Realizing how brutal she had become, she tried to soften her approach. “It’s like an itch, alright? Under my skin. I can’t stop it until I’ve scratched it, or else it becomes maddening. All of these ideas are building up inside of my head, and I have to get them out as fast as I can or—or—”_

_“Or what?” Niko interjected._

_“Or I’ll do something really fucking stupid,” Eve finished hastily. She rubbed her face furiously and tried to ignore the heat radiating off of it from how riled up she had become. “I’m going to stay at Bill’s and see if that helps,” she suddenly decided._

_“Bill?” Niko exclaimed incredulously. “You’re_ leaving? _”_

_“Only for a few days,” she added. “Enough to clear my head. The space will do us good, I think. Alright? I’m going to pack my things.” Eve shouldered past him before he could argue any further. Secretly, he must have known the difference. Once Eve made a decision, it was terribly difficult to sway her from it. That hard headedness was one of her most defining traits—but it could be a double-edged sword._

—

“I’ve never met Niko,” Villanelle realized. Eve sucked on the inside of her cheek and shifted her weight a little. Her ear was starting to get sore on the edge of Villanelle’s shoulder.

“We ended up getting divorced before you had even powered on for the first time. I think he was jealous that I had found something else to spend time on,” she replied. 

“Jealous husband?” Villanelle gasped. She grinned slyly at the other woman. “My, my, Eve, you are making it sound like we were in a steamy love affair. Is this a long-winded proposition?”

“No!” Eve yelled much too quickly. She suddenly sat up. “I’m just being honest, okay? Now you know your… _origin_ story, I guess we’ll say.” 

Villanelle gave it some thought, a small hum leaving her lips. “So did Bill help you when you were building me? I am trying to put all of these pieces together. How did you end up with Konstantin and Carolyn? Or Helene?” 

“Oh,” Eve chuckled, “yes, that was mostly Bill. It’s not like I could run on my own money the entire time. My arm alone cost a fortune. No wonder Niko was so pissed off.” 

—

_“You know, maybe if I’m lucky, your robot girlfriend will go haywire and shoot me before I have to go to work tomorrow,” Bill said as he held open the front rib panels on the prototype. Eve continued fiddling with the internal mechanisms, her elbows covered in grease and God knows what else as she rooted around to fix their latest problem: the ventilators. They resembled lungs, if only vaguely. The entire structure was modeled very closely to a human being. As if humans were built out of the same materials as cars. High tech cars, at least._

_“That would be pretty hot,” Eve grunted. She grabbed a drill and continued fiddling with the ventilator, which was currently… falling apart. Bill looked at her with a dismal expression. Or judgmental. Or both._

_“Eve, maybe we should look into doing this somewhere else,” he gently suggested. “I like you, but not enough to keep doing this in my living room. The carpet already has three oil stains on it.”_

_Eve completely stopped and slowly looked up like a deer caught in the headlights. “Oh, God, are you kicking me out to go back to Niko’s?” She asked with horror. Bill sputtered, shaking his head._

_“Fuck no, I’m not that cruel,” he laughed. “I was thinking that you would come into work with me tomorrow. I think that they would be quite interested in your little project here—what was her name again?”_

_“Villanelle,” Eve grumbled. She yanked on something inside of the metal shell._

_“Well,_ Villanelle _may catch their attention,” he reasoned. “You do realize I work at a company that invests in evolutionary technology, right?” M.V. technologies corporation had some of the most reputable products on the market but drove a very hard bargain when accepting new employees or projects. They were the revolutionaries of the time._

_Eve thought it was pretty hopeless, but if Bill thought it had any potential, the worst that could happen would be a very firm ‘no’ and then being forced to move back in with Niko while planning her next move. Maybe she’d get a job at a Korean restaurant. Maybe she’d work a desk job. Who knew?_

_“I’ll come in with you,” she replied after a moment of thought. “But only this once. I don’t need to embarrass myself any more than I usually do, I’m very good at filling my daily quota,” she muttered._

_“Aha!” Bill laughed. He clapped her on the back quickly before the panels could close. “That’s the spirit! This is why I simply_ adore _you, darling Eve.” He leaned in further, as if divulging a secret. “Besides, maybe I’ll get promoted if they really like you.” Eve rolled her eyes as he winked, but she smiled to herself as they continued the work._

_—_

“I like Bill,” Villanelle stated. “He has helped you a lot by the sounds of it.” 

“He has,” Eve said faintly. She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I think he’s my best friend. I didn’t really realize it until now,” she added, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. Inhaling, she stretched out enough for her back to crack several times. 

“Does he know we’re using his cabin?” Villanelle asked seriously. 

“No, I haven’t contacted anyone since…” Eve trailed off. She stared off into the distance as if lost in her thoughts. Vivid memories of dark blood coating her hands came crashing back into her. It was sticky and viscous, like mud caked on brand new shoes. No matter how hard she scrubbed at her hands under a gas station sink, there always seemed to be a piece of Antonio Bianchi stuck underneath her fingernails. There would always be evidence. 

Eve killed a man. Not Villanelle. Eve. 

And to think she had been grateful he was dying earlier that evening. 

“Eve? Eve?” She tuned back in to the sound of Villanelle’s voice. Her hand was waving up and down in front of her line of vision. Eve shook her head and tried to blink away images of Antonio’s corpse on the floor. 

“No,” Eve finally answered after some difficulty. “No, he doesn’t know, but he wouldn’t mind. He can’t say shit with how he left things anyways,” she continued crossly. Villanelle chuckled partly out of relief, but something sat behind her gaze that weighed heavily on Eve. 

The forest had quieted substantially since they had first sat out behind the wooden cabin. The butterflies no longer fluttered about. Moths instead took their place, zig zagging across the sky with no apparent pattern without a light source to gravitate to. 

“I think I was like a moth,” Eve stated absentmindedly. Villanelle cocked her head in confusion. She met her gaze questioningly. 

The moths continued to flutter overhead. The moon broke out of the thick fog that seemed to permanently envelop the area. Suddenly, a cloud of insects appeared directly in front of it to bask in front of the only source of light around for miles. Eve looked up at them and shrugged. 

“I was a moth and you were a light,” she explained. “I was at my darkest. Creating you was my own private form of salvation, I guess. It sounds terrible out loud, but it is what it is,” Eve continued. “I don’t think I would have made it past a month without you. All alone in that recovery room, even with Niko.” 

“That is a terrible metaphor,” Villanelle says factually, “but even back then, it sounds like I knew what my directive was. Even if I technically did not exist yet.” She smiled over at her, even if it was faint. 

Eve felt warmth flood over her body from head to toe. It was comforting. Villanelle was comforting. 

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” 

Villanelle. 

_—_

The cabin was just as horrendously ugly as they remembered when they wandered back inside. Night had fallen hours ago and the temperature had dropped considerably. Eve elected to keep her sweater on even as she prepared to go to bed. She drew the sheets back on the double bed and was extremely relieved to find that the sheets weren’t wet or all that musty. It was a miracle in itself. 

“I will be out here if you need me,” Villanelle said. She stood in the doorway of the bedroom with light pooled all around her. Her form cast a long shadow along the hard wood of the floor and onto the bed. 

Eve stopped what she was doing and regarded the android with an unreadable look on her face. 

“This is one of those times where I really can’t tell what you are thinking, Eve,” Villanelle confessed. “What do you want? I refuse to stay outside. It is spooky.” 

“No, it’s not that,” Eve chuckled. She pulled the covers down on the other side of the bed as well. “Here, come next to me. You can power down to sleep mode in here. I’m nervous the cold is going to sap your battery.” 

“You know that cold does not aff—” 

“Just let it happen, Villanelle,” Eve sighed. She climbed into bed without waiting for the other woman and peeked over the covers to look at her. “Well?” 

This was one of the only times she had seen the android look visibly awkward. Even her stance was bizarre, her arms dangling limply by her sides. Nevertheless, she slowly walked forward and climbed into the bed, but was careful not to touch Eve. She scooted to the edge of the bed. 

Eve sighed, completely exasperated. 

“I don’t bite.” 

“How am I supposed to know that?” Villanelle mumbled, but she turned over to face Eve with the smallest smile on her face. Eve stared back at her now that they were nearly nose-to-nose once again. The golden flecks in her eyes were especially reflective. They didn’t rotate to indicate any analyzing or zoom. They were still. 

Villanelle was observing. 

“Can you tell me your directive again?” Eve whispered into the warm air between them. Villanelle raised her eyebrows. 

“You can just tell me to, you know,” she responded matter-of-factly. Eve laughed quietly, sweetly, like chiming bells. 

"I know, but I thought I would ask this time,” she said. “You hate it when I spring it on you like that.” 

Villanelle buried herself deeper underneath the covers, almost as if she was hiding her growing smile. “That is true.” A pause. “You are a better listener than you give yourself credit for, Eve.” 

“I like to think that I’m good at taking criticism sometimes,” she replied. Her eyes crinkled at the edges. Villanelle’s eyes softened. 

"My directive is to protect and defend Eve Park,” she whispered. Eve reached out under the blanket and felt around until she could grasp her hand. She squeezed it and held it close to her chest. 

“And?” Eve prompted. 

“Unclear, reevaluating.” 

Her heart stopped. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a LARGE update compared to my usual but I'm not totally sure when the next time I'll be updating so i figured i'd do it now instead of later <3  
> I'm topeve on Tumblr! tell me what you think, as always!


	7. augmented reality

The cigarette smoldered in between Eve’s fingertips under the barely waking sun. She leaned against the rickety wooden railing of Bill’s cabin in total silence save for the chirping of the birds in the forest surrounding the quaint property. Now that there wasn’t a thick fog intertwining between the dense crowding of trees, it wasn’t so creepy to stick around outside. She could see the appeal for someone like Bill. 

Ashy remnants sprinkled down onto the ground. The smell of the smoke was comforting to Eve. It was exactly what she needed now that she had the time to process the whole shit show she had managed to get herself into. Last night’s dreams were full of Antonio Bianchi’s sticky blood and malfunctioning androids despite the solid presence of Villanelle next to her. It wasn’t the question of dwelling on her actions, of the unquestionable fact that she had _taken a life;_ it was _what they were going to do next._

They couldn’t hide out here forever. Could they?

She let herself indulge in the daydream for just a moment. Waking to the sunshine streaming through the windows with the curtains neatly strung back. Padding to the kitchen to find Villanelle with a cup of coffee. Tending to a garden they had cultivated in the back, passing tools back and forth, brushing hands, catching eyes, kicking over a watering can as Eve yanks Villanelle by her shirt, and teaches her one or two things about _how to be human—_.

Eve’s eyes unfocused slightly until a burning sensation snapped her out of the reverie. The hand with the cigarette jerked away violently as she hissed and blew at the circular mark on the opposite hand.

“Fuck me,” she muttered while she promptly tossed the butt onto the ground and stomped it into the dirt angrily. Her foot came down several times until it was destroyed into absolute nothingness with hints of the shredded white exterior. The sound of someone clearing their throat behind her made Eve pause mid-stomp. 

“I see that you’re having a difficult time. Should I come back later?” Carolyn prompted at the head of the dirt driveway. Her hands were deeply buried into the pockets of her trench coat, presumably with the keys to the car that had been neatly parked on the side of the main road. Eve stared at her unblinkingly. Somewhere deep inside, it registered that she hadn’t even noticed the other woman pulling up. Exactly how long had Carolyn been watching her?

“Are you going to arrest me?” Eve finally asked dumbly. She put her foot back down slowly. Villanelle was still inside peacefully charging away, probably dying of boredom in the process since there wasn’t much in the ways of entertainment. The mere fact that she hadn’t started hollering out of the window to talk to Eve was a miracle in itself. 

Carolyn spread her hands. “Do I look like I’m going to arrest you, Eve?” She asked. At Eve’s silence, she shook her head. “No, I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to bring the two of you back home. I can’t imagine wanting to spend another night in this wreck,” she said. Her gaze flickered over Eve’s shoulder pointedly where a shingle fell off of the roof. 

_Plop._

“Point made,” Carolyn stated with an air of finality. “Come, I’m sure that Villanelle is well-rested by now,” she continued as she began to turn away and walk back down the driveway. 

“That’s it?” Eve said incredulously, which gave Carolyn pause. The older woman cocked her head towards her in the barest hint of amusement. 

“That’s it,” Carolyn repeated. “It would have been ridiculous of me to not take a malfunction into account,” she reasoned, even as she gazed at Eve like she had just spit on her shoe and rubbed it in for spite. Pursing her lips, she scrutinized Eve for a second longer. 

“Your response, on the other hand, was quite interesting, even if it did certainly cut out work for me.” Carolyn waved it off and trudged toward the car. “We’ll revisit that at a later date. Get your things, your apartment is overdue for a deep clean by the looks of it.”

Eve watched her disappear behind the corner of the brush. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a second cigarette to cradle it in between her fingers. Maybe she’d be able to absorb the nicotine by osmosis. 

“Fuck me twice,” she muttered when she realized her lighter had finally run out of fluid. Looks like she’d have to figure out how. 

—

“Can you at least turn on the radio? I am desperate, the cabin had absolutely nothing to offer to us android folk,” Villanelle complained loudly in the small Volvo. The driver spoke of nothing and continued to stare straight ahead at the road. Carolyn had smartly inserted earplugs about an hour ago. All of this left Eve as the unfortunate receiver of any wayward comments Villanelle had stored since the beginning of their return journey.

“He’s an android, Villanelle,” Eve replied tiredly. The lock on the door was beginning to tempt her more and more as time went on. She tried thinking of different ways she could use her arm to cushion her fall against the hot pavement that would certainly greet her on her way out. Most of them were unsuccessful, providing Eve could land correctly in the first place. 

Villanelle glanced at her crossly. “That is obvious. He’s so rude,” she said, making sure to enunciate the latter half of the sentence clearly for the driver himself. His bulky silhouette in the seat didn’t even stir. 

“He can’t talk,” Eve corrected. “He doesn’t think. It’s basically a navigator application implemented into a human-resembling frame. He isn’t like you.” She neglected to mention that there wasn’t really any other android _like_ Villanelle. Not in the way that she emulated human behaviors or created her own interests and likes and dislikes. Certainly not in the way that she developed her own perception and opinion on things. Villanelle had shown with an abundance that she was adept at being subjective while also incorporating the objectivity of a normal android. 

And there certainly wasn’t any self-sufficient android out there who could change their own directive in any capacity, which was currently the biggest problem inhabiting all corners of Eve’s mind. 

_"My directive is to protect and defend Eve Park,” she whispered. Eve reached out under the blanket and felt around until she could grasp her hand. She squeezed it and held it close to her chest._

_“And?” Eve prompted._

_“Unclear, reevaluating.”_

It was with certainty that Eve knew that the entire issue would have to be addressed at some point. The minor issues were beginning to pop up everywhere, and sooner or later, if Eve didn’t do _something,_ they were going to amalgamate into _one giant headache._ Like the night of Antonio Bianchi’s murder, for example. That was huge. It was still unaddressed, too. 

She’d have to come up with a task list. It’s difficult when you’ve been focused on running for your life and navigating the weird tension between you and your android. 

“He isn’t like you,” Villanelle mocked. She crossed her arms and glared out of the window like she had been doing for the majority of the last hour. It wasn’t as if this was even her first attempt at adding some liveliness to the ride: for the first half-hour she had continually spit out every joke she could think of in an effort to make Carolyn crack a smile, hence the neon orange earplugs that she now sported to maintain her sanity. 

“I can’t believe I thought you were having an affair with her,” Villanelle had whispered in awe. “You know who would? Elena. She has her head stuck so far up Carolyn’s a—” Rightfully so, it was here that Eve had the decency to smack her on the arm and furiously tell her to shut the fuck up. Not that she was wrong, per se, but that wasn’t very _nice,_ to which Villanelle unhelpfully supplied that Eve had proven quite effectively that she was beyond capable of being _not nice._

Eve almost caught herself thinking with mild irritation that this would be following her for the rest of her life, but it wasn’t as if killing a man was on the same level as an embarrassing night out, per se. Maybe to someone like Villanelle—or who Villanelle was _supposed_ to be. Maybe someone like one of Helene’s projects: her lifeless combat cronies, or even the driver bot that sat, at most, a couple of feet away from them. 

“I forgot to mention,” Carolyn spoke up suddenly in the passenger seat, “you have a meeting tomorrow morning, Eve. And we are using some of your vacation time to cover the hours that you missed because of this entire fiasco. You understand I’m sure.” 

Considering it seemed like they were saving her from life imprisonment…

“Of course,” Eve replied with a plastered smile on her face. 

—

“Apologies for the mess,” Carolyn had said as they were dropped off. What a fucking understatement.

“I guess they don’t specialize in clean up services,” Eve muttered to herself as she stepped over the shattered remnants of one of her porcelain decorations. The apartment was totaled. The couch in the living room had been overturned, all of the frames on the wall had been haphazardly strewn across the floor, pieces of the dishes were scattered over every surface. One of the unintended side effects of being a wanted criminal for at least a couple hours. 

“At least they closed the door,” Villanelle replied with a grimace that was meant to be a smile. She gingerly pushed some debris aside and ventured further into the space. A small whirring sound in the corner of the room caught her attention. GABRIEL rocked helplessly from side to side, untouched but clearly ruffled. 

“Hey, buddy,” the android cooed as she picked him up in her hands. She lightly brushed off any dust and brought him to the kitchen where Eve was evaluating the damage. The harried expression on her face brightened when she spotted the droid in Villanelle’s arms.

GABRIEL whistled happily. 

“I thought they would have taken you,” Eve sighed in relief. “Thank you,” she added as she extracted it from Villanelle’s grip and patted him reassuringly. Doing a once-over on the entire apartment, there wasn’t much that she could do except shrug. 

“Think that insurance will cover it?” Villanelle questioned hopefully. 

Eve laughed. “Do you think that applies to us anymore? I don’t know what’s going on with me—or _us_ —until I talk to Carolyn—or whoever—tomorrow. I have a pretty good salary if that counts for anything.” Her smile faded as she stared grimly at the remains of her living space. She had built everything here from the ground up. Now it was all gone within a day or two. 

The feeling was familiar. 

Villanelle must have noticed her change in demeanor because she had begun to sweep up some of the debris without any prompting. She nodded at Eve who still had GABRIEL clutched in her arms like a lifeline. 

“Take a break, Eve. Go get some food. Your old bones cannot handle this type of labor—at least I am built for it,” the android joked. “I am only in my twenties, remember? I should be able to run circles around you.” 

Eve stalled for a moment. “Are you sure? I—” 

“Go,” Villanelle interrupted firmly. “I will be here when you get back. Do not worry about me.”

“I’ll only be gone for an hour,” the older woman replied. She started walking out but lingered in the doorway. “Maybe I’ll track down some hagelslag,” Eve added. Villanelle grinned at her retreating form before returning to the task at hand. 

A few minutes of deafening silence aside from the harsh scraping of glass into the broom pan passed until Villanelle couldn’t take it anymore. 

“You can come out, Konstantin, you are shit at hiding,” Villanelle shouted without looking up. Distant thumping footsteps came closer until his shadow fell over her. He looked around the apartment with raised eyebrows. 

“I have seen worse,” he finally said. The blonde scowled at him as she dumped another pile of junk into a trash bag.

“You are an asshole, you know that?” She asked. “Was this even necessary?” 

“ _I’m_ the asshole?” Konstantin exclaimed incredulously. “This was only partially my doing. We were going to wipe her off of the earth, Villanelle, had you not reached out sooner. Does she know that you led us to her?” 

“Of course not,” Villanelle snapped. “Eve would have never let me do that in the first place, even if she was not panicking. She is the most stubborn person that I know.”

“Wait until you meet Irina,” Konstantin shot back drily. Soberly, he continued, “Carolyn is going to talk to her tomorrow. You knew exactly what you were getting into when you did this, yes?” 

Villanelle was silent for a few moments as she finished clearing up the kitchen floor. “Yes,” she finally replied. “I thought about it very hard.” 

“Good,” Konstantin said, apparently satisfied with this answer. “You cannot blame Eve. She knows that she has created something invaluable. If you were in her shoes, wouldn’t you do the same thing?” 

“No,” Villanelle chuckled. “I am too selfish for that. I can’t imagine how insufferable I would be as a human. It doesn't matter anyway,” she hummed. “Eve will be safe, and I will be able to do my job. Now get out so I can put everything back to normal before she gets back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY i finally updated yeehaw!!!!! this was more of an in-between chapter in case you haven't noticed  
> I suffered w a lot of writers block lately so I'm really happy that I finally got some content out to you guys!  
> I'm at @topeve on tumblr if you want to talk <3


	8. 8bit

The deep mahogany of the hardwood floor sparkled in comparison to what it had looked like a mere two hours before: covered in drywall, glass, and papers of every subject under the sun. The frames on the walls were straightened up like a salute to a general, and the dishes stacked neatly in the cupboards. If photographic memory served her right, this was the closest Villanelle was going to get to the previous state of affairs in Eve’s apartment. 

GABRIEL whistled musically in the corner from where it was placed on the charging pad. A luminous smiley face slowly scrolled over its stark white surface. 

“Yes,” the android hummed in agreement. “You are right. I did a great job. Would you expect anything else? Of course not,” she chastised. GABRIEL whirred in contemplation before letting out a neutral tone: the equivalent of a shoulder shrug. 

“I do not know why she programmed sarcasm in you,” Villanelle grumbled crossly. She did a slow 180 around the room to survey her work once again. Everything that wasn’t broken beyond repair had been neatly returned to its original place. The things that were crushed had to be thrown out. Fortunately, Konstantin’s crew had seemed to merely make a superficial mess out of the place. 

It could have been worse. Besides, she didn’t want to leave Eve to deal with the aftermath all on her own. She was basically a cripple at her age. It was quite unfortunate.

Eve came bustling in no less than a moment later, her arms chock full of paper bags that were undoubtedly full of things that were meant to last the night outside of a functioning refrigerator. She shimmied her jacket off hurriedly while simultaneously tripping over her shoes, yet all movement came to a sudden stop as soon as she laid eyes on the rest of the apartment. 

“Villanelle,” she started, then seemed to lose her train of thought. “You’re not serious.” 

“What if I am?” She shot back in response, a small crinkle at the corner of her eye and a smile on her face. “You know it is absolutely nothing for me to do some light cleaning, Eve. I am a robot, remember?” A puzzled expression came over her face. “It is too bad I cannot turn into a vacuum or something, you know, like the Transformers—”

The bags fell to the floor from Eve’s arms with a loud clatter. A can rolled across the clean floor some ways until it hit the side of the android’s foot. The same foot that braced Villanelle against the brutal impact of Eve’s body colliding with her own, her lithe arms encircling her in a tight embrace. Warm pressed itself into synthetic materials until it felt like one as Eve buried herself into the tight junction of Villanelle’s shoulder and neck. 

What was that expression that humans often used? The air got sucked out of Villanelle’s lungs. The air left her. The breath was knocked out of her—except that now it wasn’t, and it was overwhelming, this sudden presence enveloping her and overwhelming her sensory receptors through the powerful musk of cigarette smoke wafting from Eve’s shirt and the faint floral scent that intertwined with it in her hair. 

“Thank you,” Eve murmured, “but I am never turning you into a vacuum transformer, no matter how convenient it might be.” She breathed in deeply and leaned further into the solid frame of the blonde, who hadn’t moved a singular step. Eve paused.

“Are you okay?” The older woman questioned, the familiar inquisitive husk of her voice booming deeply in the android’s ears. 

“I don’t know,” Villanelle stated, the syllables tumbling from her lips unsteadily. “I feel very warm. Internally. I have never felt a sensation like this, Eve.” A quiet hiss resonated from the android’s body followed by a light vibration. She made no move to push Eve away and only let her arms rest around her lightly. 

“Did you just ventilate?” Eve asked in surprise. Her head lifted slightly from where she had tucked herself into Villanelle’s shoulder, her raven curls falling away from her face as she keened upwards to look at the other woman’s expression. Villanelle grimaced. 

“Yes,” she admitted. “My internal temperature has risen exponentially in the last minute or two.”

“Am I blocking off any of the vents?” Eve questioned alarmedly. Her arms began to loosen around the android as she started to pull away, but the motion was halted by the tightening of Villanelle’s grip around her body to keep them pressed together. 

“No.” 

Eve stopped fidgeting and stared up at Villanelle in slight shock at the intensity in her voice. Villanelle stared back at her levelly, even going so far as to directly take Eve’s hands and place them exactly where they were before on her waist. The heat of her skin radiated through the light cotton of the t-shirt that the android sported. 

“It’s nice,” Villanelle said, her breath fanning across Eve’s face. Eve blinked, seemingly shaking herself back to the present—back to focus on her words. Where had she gone just then? What was she thinking?

“What?” She asked confusedly. Her eyes flickered from where they had dropped to the blonde’s lips. They darted back and forth indiscreetly. 

“This. Being close.” The words got stuck in her mouth and tumbled around uselessly for a long stretch of time before she could properly choose what to say. How much to reveal. What kinds of thought processes were going on and what her artificial neurons and electrical impulses were firing in her head. Right now, all she could focus on was the way that Eve’s pupils were whole and black and ready to swallow her up. 

They were black holes, which was quite fitting because Eve was leading her in further and further with her gravitational pull.

“We’ve been close before,” the dark haired woman remarked wryly. The corner of her lips turned upwards like she was barely keeping a secret on the tip of her tongue. Her head tilted to the side as she regarded the blonde with a new spark in her gaze. 

“... Maybe not like this,” she relented slowly. 

Villanelle shook her head.

“Not like this,” she repeated. “I know what touch feels like, and it is not like this. I touch anyone else and it is simple skin-to-skin contact. Then I do this with you—” she took Eve’s hand in her own and flattened them together, palm to palm, “—and it is like a supernova in my head.” Slowly, their fingers interlocked as Eve drew herself closer with the leverage, stepping further into Villanelle’s space until they were sharing the same air once again. 

“And you,” the android continued, “are the dying star.” 

Eve chuckled quietly. “How poetic of you,” she snarked, the crow’s feet around her eyes temporarily deepening as she grinned to herself. “This isn’t another quote from Goodreads, is it? Or a really long set-up to a pickup line?” 

“No,” Villanelle groaned, “I am trying to be serious and bare my soul to you and this is what you come up with? Goodreads again? Really, Eve?” 

“Okay!” Eve exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Keep going, Shakespeare. I’m a dying star.”

“No, no,” the blonde replied, “I am done. You have ruined the opportunity. Get off of me, Eve. This was the last straw!” Hands began pulling themselves away and pushing at the soft of the other woman as Villanelle attempted to extract herself from the intricate embrace that they had wound themselves into. Her foot caught in between Eve’s—who, admittedly, had placed them very well for this effect—and she suddenly found herself free-falling until the older woman caught her haphazardly in her arms.

“God, you’re so heavy,” Eve grunted, then soundly pressed her lips against the plush of Villanelle’s. The android locked up stiffly in place as the lenses in her eyes rapidly rotated to focus in and out on the inventor’s face. Then, as if awakening from a deep slumber, she pressed closer to Eve and righted themselves to share the weight of her frame. Her hands meticulously found themselves in a forest of thick curls to pull Eve closer, to truly show her what happened when man and machine melded themselves together as one—

Eve jerked back with a gasp for air. “The groceries! I got ice cream in the—”

Villanelle pressed her thumb to Eve’s lips. She fell to an abrupt silence. “Forget about the ice cream, Eve.”

“Okay,” Eve whispered, then promptly slid the top of Villanelle’s thumb into the warmth of her mouth. She bit down.

“Ow! What the fuck, Eve?” Villanelle exclaimed as she yanked her hand away. She sulked as she investigated any potential damage to the synthetic skin.

“Oh! Oh, God, sorry, that was supposed to be—uh—well, sexy,” came Eve’s sheepish response. Her face slowly went increasingly sour as the realization dawned upon her. “You didn’t even feel that, did you?”

“No,” Villanelle laughed. “I thought it was funny. Want to do it again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI long time no see!!!! here i am with an update (finally), it's a brutal semester but i managed to squeeze this one in as promised!  
> i will continue to work on this fic whenever possible and hopefully be more consistent with the updates!  
> my tumblr is @topeve if you want to talk!


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